"Where am I to make use of my strength, since there is no demand for it? I ought to fight with robbers, or turn a robber myself. In general I ought to do something big. And that would be done, not with the head, but with the arms and breast. While here we have to go to the Exchange and try to aim well to make a rouble. What do we need it for? And what is it, anyway? Has life been arranged in this form forever? What sort of life is it, if everyone finds it too narrow for him? Life ought to be according to the taste of man. If it is narrow for me; I must move it asunder that I may have more room. I must break it and reconstruct it. But how? That's where the trouble lies! What ought to be done that life may be freer? That I don't understand, and that's all there is to it!" Venus Pandemos BY RICHARD DEHMEL (Contemporary German poet, born 1863) This was the last time. I was lounging in The night-café that lights the suburb gloom, Tired with the reek of sultry sofa plush, And with my glowing toddy, and the steam Of women sweating in their gowns: tired, lustful. Clouds of tobacco smoke were wavering through The laughter and the haggling cries and shrieks Of painted women and the men they drew. The rattling at the sideboard of the spoons Cheered on the hubbub of the mart of love Uninterrupted like a tambourine.... I was about to choose, when, where I sate, The crimson curtain of the door was split, And a fresh couple entered. A cold draught Cut through the heated room, and some one swore; But through the crowd the pair stepped noiselessly. Over against me at the transverse end Of the corridor, whence they could sweep the room, They took their seats. The chandelier of bronze Hung o'er them like an awning heavy, old. And no one seemed to know the couple, but At my right hand I heard a hoarse voice pipe: "I must have come across that pair before." He sat quite still. The loud gray of the air Almost recoiled before his callous brow, Which wan as wax rose into his sparse hair. His great pale eye-lids hung down deep and shut, On both sides lay around his sunken nose Their shadows, and through his thin beard shone the skin. And only when the woman at his side, Less tall than he, and of a lissom shape, Hissed, giggling, in his ear some obscene word, Half rose of one black eye the heavy lid, And slowly round he turned his long, thin neck, As when a vulture lunges at a corpse.