He is not dead, not yet. Sick through and through he weathers fearful dreams, waking only to cough blood onto the floor. But that is what he has always done, don’t you see? What could those smooth measures be but the leaking blood of the soul? What could those lines of poetry foretell but the death of a humble giant? He is dying, and that is what makes his sound so glorious to our ears. It is a grey story his quivering lips tell, whispering it to anyone who listens, and to his own shadow when he is alone. And he will carry that story with him and tell it over and over again until his heart is either still in his chest or in splinters on the concrete. Today that holy organ pulses and stabs against his ribs. But how could those movements be beautiful if he were not dying? And my brothers, how could he be dying if he will not one day be dead?