The Old Man Reads His Young Man Letters

Last January, on a snowy Sunday afternoon, I chanced to find my orphaned correspondence abandoned appropriately in the back of a closet. I began to read the words I had written fifty-six years ago and recognized my wrinkleless face in the mirror of those pages, insecure in my illicit desires, anxious to pay Caesar his due, and yet the dauphin of my romantic dramas, warts and all. They stirred awake all those lost slumbering memories of Germany and the days of hurry up and wait. How could I have guessed that one day I would share these letters with you?