Stockings of the thinnest silk
As well as very small, black silk shoes.
And in the evening you will dance
Soft, false dances
In the new silk shoes
And new silk stockings.
In the garden. In the sun.
Close to the water.
But at night I'll have you whipped
By four smiling eunuchs.



Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Barber


I stand this way on cloudy winter days
From dawn to dusk and I soap heads,
Shave them and powder them and speak
Indifferent words, stupid, foolish.
Most heads are completely shut,
They sleep limply. And others read again
And look slowly through long lids,
As though they had sucked everything dry.
Still others open the red cracks of their mouths wide
And tell jokes.
For my part, I smile courteously. Ah, I hide
Deep under these smiles, as though in a coffin,
The terrible, repressed, wise complaints
About the fact that we are forced into this existence,