Where can I sit on this trifle of dirt
That revolves without aim in the blackness
Of space? If I ask, will the asking,
Unanswered, come round on itself—
Even in emptiness make a thing whole?
My companions are gone—Newton and Darwin,
Lao-Tzu, Omar Khayyam.
My mother and uncle, my lost wife and children,
Abbas and his daughters and sons—
Whom can I love who will not pass to nothing,
When all pass to nothing, along with this song?
Is there nothing and nothing,
A drivel from dry sea beds
As time slides to an end?
It cannot be so.
I must reach out to what I’m unable to grasp,
Reach out to what I want to believe,
And my mutterings slip from my lips,
Faintly, and faintly dissolve in the air,
And my small room is soundless again.