(There’s nothing stranger than to step out of the morning streets into the illusion of a theater rehearsal.) The street’s already pulsing to the left, and to the right the moon is in rehearsal.

I discover strange fellows, the smokestacks. In groups of three, five, seven and sometimes alone, they stand up on the rooftops; like trees in a landscape. Space winds like a river around them and into the deep. An owl slips past them on its way home; it was probably a crow or a pigeon. The houses stand helter-skelter; curious contours, steep sloping walls; not at all arranged by the streets. The rod on the roof with the thirty-six porcelain heads and the twelve stretched wires, which I count without comprehension, stands as a completely inexplicable secret structure up against the early morning sky. I’m wide awake now, but wherever I look, my eyes glide over pentagons, heptagons and steep prisms: So who am I? The amphora on the roof with its cast-iron flame, ridiculous pineapple by day, vulgar, disgusting thing – now, in this solitude, it soothes the heart like a fresh trace of humanity.

At last two legs come through the night. The step of two woman legs in my ear: I don’t want to look. My ear stands like a gateway on the street. Never will I be so at one with a woman as with this unknown figure whose steps disappear ever deeper in my ear.

Then two women. The one sordidly slinking along, the other stamping with the disregard of age. I look down. Black. The clothes of old women have a form all their own. These two are bound for church. At this hour, the soul has long since been taken into custody, and so I won’t have anything more to do with it.

Sheep, As Seen in Another Light

As to the history of sheep: Today man views the sheep as stupid. But God loved it. He repeatedly compared man with sheep. Is it possible that God was completely wrong?

As to the psychology of sheep: The finely chiseled expression of exalted consciousness is not unlike the look of stupidity.

On the heath near Rome: They had the long faces and the delicate skulls of martyrs. Their black stockings and hoods against the white fur reminded of morbid monks and fanatics.

When they rummaged through the low, sparse grass, their lips trembled nervously and scattered the timber of a quivering steel string over the earth. Joined in chorus, their voices rang out like the lamentations of prelates in the cathedral. But when many of them sang together, they formed a men’s, women’s and children’s choir. In soft swells they lifted and lowered their voices; it was like a wandering train in the darkness, struck every other second by light, and the children’s voices then stood on an ever-returning hill, while the men strode through the valley. Day and night rolled a thousand times faster through their song and drove the earth onward to its end. Sometimes a solitary voice flung itself up or tumbled down in fear of damnation. Heaven’s clouds were recreated in the white ringlets of their hair. These are age-old Catholic animals, religious companions of mankind.

Once again in the South: Man is twice as big as usual in their midst and reaches like a church spire up toward heaven. Beneath our feet the earth was brown, and the grass like scratched-in gray-green stripes. The sun shone heavy on the sea as on a lead mirror. Boats were busy fishing as in Saint Peter’s time.