I have not eaten in three days. I have counted the sun for three decades, no, seven centuries now. Or is it a thousand? Time has salved it all away. What remains with me always are those endearingly stroked faces of stone. Marble. Wax. Oil. Throughout the ages, unchanged.

Do I "envy" them? Oh, maybe. Yes. In a way. We want what we cannot have from each other, not now, but because we share our love, it is for them I work and to me they speak, show and tell. Their voices, their sights -- render me a monument. Pure, graceful ecstasy. The rose vines choke me of reply. By candle light, the way is illuminated without any direction at all, and still clear as knells. I cannot attend to them.