i ask myself

I ask myself from time to time what reasons move me to study, as my night comes on and with no hope of mastery or precision, the language of the harsh Angles and Saxons. Wasted by the years, my memory keeps letting fall the word repeated in vain, and in much the same way my life goes on weaving and unweaving its weary history. Perhaps (I tell myself) it's that the soul knows in some secret and sufficient way that, destined, as it is, never to die, its vast grave sphere encompasses the whole. Beyond this arduous task, beyond this verse waits, inexhaustible, the universe.