The mountains and the desert say nothing. The very earth is dumb. The sea booms, but it booms indistinctly. The sky burns by day and freezes by night. Winter follows summer and summer succeeds winter. People are born and die, and slowly all things disintegrate. Our surroundings. Our thoughts. My hand that writes. This pen, this paper, this desk. All our beliefs and convictions. Families. Everything is consumed by the cancer of time. Decomposed like the notes of my flute in this lonely room at night—sounding forth, dispersing, then gone. All things entropize. Everything unravels. Even as they persist they are on their way to nonbeing. The strongest emotions. Words. Stone buildings. Fortified cities. Whole nations. Perhaps the stars above as well. Time devours all. And yet all the while human wisdom goes on trying to distinguish the good from the bad, the true from the false, though it too must crumble before the onslaught, which grinds to smithereens the good, bad, right, wrong, beautiful, ugly labels that we seek to pin on things.

When I keel over one morning and die alone like a bug on the floor of this room, the slate will be wiped clean. A note was heard but it is heard no more. To quote Bolognesi, Bless’a the name of the Lord Who grant’a a perfect peace. But there is no perfect peace. Time that takes us apart will take away all traces of us. As the waters cover the sea. Would it have been any different had I been loved by a woman? Had I had children and grandchildren? The waters would have covered the sea just the same. I am seized by fear and trembling.

What exactly is it, then, that has been happening to me? All of a sudden, on the brink of old age, I have begun to crave a smidgeon of power and honor. Not only to crave them, but to get them, absurd as that may sound. Why, what better example could there be than Yolek, a man sated with honor and power. How I have envied him all my life, how I have longed to be a witness to his downfall, suffering, anguish, even death, so I could take his place. Why, though? To be loved? But Yolek was not loved. Eshkol is not loved. Who is? And Bialik, in one of his poems, asks what love is. Well, just for the record let me answer.