I travelled far into the modern land: charade,

charade of pride; fifty billion places, lights, and faces,

each with their own gleam and their own glide.

All this writhing mass comes together fast

and yet ruinously shatters back into crumbs—

no science and no faith steer their urges.

Even order and chaos in here do not fight.

Out of this boredom, one manifold atom swelled

which, unlike art or craft, served nothing but itself:

I share no thirst, I have no drive, I am without hunger,

and within my body no bodies strive.

This open world had given birth to something adamantine.

My thought does wander, and my thought does drift

to words once whispered by the sand-sunk Sphinx:

What is ever whole and yet divides

when the day is done and the night is nigh?

Mortal life rushes to answer, yet the truth has no reply.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)