THE PERIOD
I stop. There is a period to my walk as to a phrase that is finished. It is the title of a tomb at my feet, at this turning where the road descends. From there I take my last view of the earth. I survey the country of the dead. With its groups of pines and olive trees, it spreads out between the deep fields that enclose it. Everywhere there is consummate plenty: Ceres has embraced Persephone. Inescapably this marks the ultimate. I recognize at the foot of these unchangeable mountains the wide line of the river. I define our frontier, I accept it. My exile is symbolized by this island crowded with the dead, devoured by its harvests. Standing alone amid a buried people, my feet among the names spoken by the grass, I watch this cleft in the mountains, through which the soft wind, like a growling dog, has tried for two days to force the enormous cloud it has drawn from the waters behind me.
It is done; the day is completely gone. There is nothing left but to return, traversingagain the road that leads me to the house. At this halt, where rest the carriers of coffins and buckets, I look behind me for a long time at the yellow road where the living fare with the dead, which ends like a red period upon the crowded sky.