IV
LIFE WITHIN DEATH

Just hearing it rain and feeling I’m alive;
the entire universe is converted into mist
and my consciousness is filled with haze
as I hear the raindrops slowly falling.

Inside me all that is active has died
while my vision is blurred by the rain,
and down there is a dish where water
drips from the hourglass and the archive

of memory with silent recollections;
my spirit is filled with pure inertia;
without a lance and therefore no shield,

at the mercy of the winds of fate.
This life, which is bare existence,
is it not, perhaps, the life within death?