Wick of the Slain Lamp

Sometimes, I feel myself strangely, terribly alone,
as if I am the only living thing in the entire world,
around me, even for hundreds of miles and miles…
no one anywhere.

Sometimes, I feel like a solitary astronaut
sinking into the abyss of a black hole,
where in the thick gathering of pitch darkness
I keep sinking and sinking…

Sometimes it seems
I have my dwelling all alone on some star
billions of light-years away from Earth.
There, no one around, nothing at all.

Sometimes, I feel like I am blazing bright,
like some solitary lamp in the dead of night,
burning and burning until I die out, just before dawn.

Sometimes, I feel like the only traveler
in a caravan crossing the lonely Sahara, wherever my eyes turn—
ahead, behind, left, right…
only endless dunes and nothing but cities of sand.

Sometimes, I feel like a burning volcano,
a volcano blazing fierce, burning on for thousands of years…