Wie wir einst so glücklich waren!

In the damp hush of an endless autumn rain, the narrator wanders through his dimly lit rooms, listening to the steady patter on the slate roofs while the world outside drifts between mist, fleeting sunshine and the cold night sky. The weather mirrors his inner solitude, and he spends long hours cutting paper, leafing through his and his father’s journals, and feeling the weight of a grief that has no poetic disguise. Each sunrise and moonlit fog only deepens his sense of being an outsider, cut off from the simple comforts of a loyal dog or a caring housekeeper.

Amid this isolation he turns to an old volume of Roman elegies, where a line—“Wie wir einst so glücklich waren”—stirs a sudden flood of memory. The phrase pulls him back to a bright summer on a German manor, to golden fields, clear blue mornings and a time when love and community seemed within reach. That recollection becomes both a balm and a reminder of what he now feels lost, setting the stage for a quietly desperate search for connection and meaning.