Farewell, you little street,
Good-bye, you tranquil roof!
Father, mother looked sadly as I left,
And my beloved too.
Here, far, far in the distance,
It's for my home I long!
My companions sing merrily,
But it is a hollow song.
There will be different cities
And different girls to see!
Although there are different girls,
There is none for me.
Different cities, different girls,
And I right there without a sound!
Different cities, different girls,
Oh how I'd love to turn around.

Two weeks later, he [Brod] received a piece of poetry from Jungborn. It was just as "pure," but in a very different way. It was a popular song that Kafka had sung along to a few times without being able to get the melody quite right. It was called "In the Distance" and was about as old as Kafka himself. This song, by Albert Graf von Schlippenbach, was folksy, which is a euphemism for trivial. Yet it cut Kafka to the quick. Just a few months later, he confessed to a woman that he was "in love" with this song. He sent her a copy of the text but asked to have it back because he could not do without it; "pure emotion" had been rendered in perfect form in this text. Without further elaboration, he added, "And I can swear that the poem's sorrow is genuine."

Reiner Stach: Kafka: The Decisive Years

Translated [from German] by Shelley Frisch