Why? Because I was alone.
There is nothing so strange in creation as the man who is alone.
Even he whose near ones have all died, one by one, is not alone--
companionship comes for him from behind the screen of death. But
he, whose kin are there, yet no longer near, who has dropped out
of all the varied companionship of a full home--the starry
universe itself seems to bristle to look on him in his darkness.
Where I am, I am not. I am far away from those who are around
me. I live and move upon a world-wide chasm of separation,
unstable as the dew-drop upon the lotus leaf.
Why do not men change wholly when they change? When I look into
my heart, I find everything that was there, still there--only
they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become
jumbled up. The gems that were strung into a necklace are now
rolling in the dust. And so my heart is breaking.
I feel I want to die. Yet in my heart everything still lives--
nor even in death can I see the end of it all: rather, in death
there seems to be ever so much more of repining. What is to be
ended must be ended in this life--there is no other way out.
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