What do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.

The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same.

... a man leaves much when he leaves his own country.

When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.