From a note inside the cover of a used copy of Demian by Hermann Hesse. I found the book in 2009 outside a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn amid dark and well lighted alleys, houses and towers, chimes and faces, rooms rich and comfortable, warm and relaxed, rooms pregnant with secrets:

Jim,

And is our pain

the Mark of Cain

hidden now

beneath our brow

by seasoned faces

that leave not

traces

of this, our fate

we love

we hate

C.

ENJOY!

(photo source)

(Sparks: “Angst In My Pants”)