He was probably a little more articulated than most of his peers,
and at that point, too deprived of any further illusions to stand
the excess of their attention without even a single bitter note.
But once he had descended behind the wall of sarcasm, he never
really managed to free himself from a certain stiffness of disposition.
It was not until years later, when Mr. Nothing admitted to the poet
that there was something intimately familiar about that somewhat
long glance, which, he regretted, was lost in a too late realisation.
But even his disappointment was marked with a hint of irony:
“At least we were spared the cold words ‘yours’ and ‘mine’.”
hidden pilcrow 