
Sometimes I pick up my book of Heine and enjoy his pop-song sorrow; he sings of death so bitterly it makes me fear my own tomorrow. He isn't some pretentious poet, but a prankster in the flesh. He wakes you from a dream, a dream still fresh. He runs with a girl downhill, but it's a dream! He's an old man. To break your heart with his is Heine's only plan. Listen to these moderns: thinking, learned, doddering, slow. In slow-motion they think there's something Heine doesn't know.