While leafing through an old notebook of mine lately I stumbled upon this excerpt from a Joseph Brodsky poem which I had copied out from some websites. It is from Brodsky's I Sit By The Window. What shines through the all-pervading disenchantment with reality is the honesty. ..

I'm by now acquainted to the function of such unfeigned lines in revealing to us the vanity of things as much as it preserves us as we make our way through this farcical and fake world.

I reproduce here the lines.

A loyal subject of these second-rate years,

I proudly admit that my finest ideas

are second-rate, and may the future take them

as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.

I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out

which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.