When they punish me
Very quiet I keep.
I cry myself to sleep
And waking up I’m free.
When they punish me
I refuse to weep.
A small boy’s all they see
But I laugh in my sleep.
Grown-ups finish dead—
Gramps and Uncle passed away—
But I shall live instead
For ever and a day.
My life—this is what I decided—should be a transcendence, an advance from one stage to another; it should be a space around which others tread and then are left behind, just as music moves theme by theme, tempo by tempo, played, finished and left behind, never tired, never sleeping, always awake, always completely present. In connection with experiences of awakening, I had realised that such stages and spaces exist, and that the last phase of every section of life has within it overtones of decline and of a death wish, which then leads to a movement into another space, another awakening, a new beginning.
From Das Glasperlenspiel
(The Glass Bead Game) 1943