Chapter Forty-Three
when a lamp goes out and falls from the shelf, at that moment
if you rush after it, what is dearer — a burnt hand or the lamp itself?
At the basis of these words there are 1,000 fine poems,
there is the bird of life, death flying in, the shudder of warm blood,
so many eternities spent in loneliness and peoplessness,
so many signs and echoes of future indifference.
All this without doubt I can interpret,
but in remembering the lamp again, I think that what burned me
was not the glass but the fire;
O God, rich in secrets and as miserly in answers,
or is such an undefined life our payment instead of answers?
The day died. On the 14660th night.
There is no bottle or lamp. You can become drunk
because there is no wine in the bottle, although you understand this
