“I looked back suddenly
into the empty room
and saw the lamp that I had lit
still shining on the little table by the window
and throwing its light on the tumbled sheets of paper
on which I had been writing.
And I felt as though long years ago a man,
whom I had know very little,
had lighted that lamp,
and sat by the window writing and believing that he was a poet,
and then he came out of the room and found the letter.
He would not go into the room again:
And not he, but I will go in softly
And put out the lamp,
And lay aside the useless paper.”
(Humberte Wolfe in The lamp in the empty room)
Seraing (B)