once upon a time there was, or wasn’t, a poor man. but he was so poor that he didn’t even have a thing of his own. he had neither daughters nor a youngest son, neither a house nor land of a stone’s throw, no woman, god or country did he have, nor clothes to make him different from the beasts of the woods and meadows. when he walked there was no dust under his feet, when he looked up, well, there was no sky above his head, and he had nothing to look at on the horizon either. so this man didn’t even exist because he was so very poor that he didn’t. still, whoever saw him gazed only at him. they saw the poor man just balancing on this the almost very last straw of the world, just like that, and that he could do this really really well. they saw that it was beautiful. they kept looking. that he really didn’t have one single thing of his own. they wondered. or just pretended. they bought. and sold. they lived, those who could. but hell! the poor man knew just the same that, were there no Moon, then day after day there would be nothing but seven hours. seven entire hours. one single day. and a single day is enough for the silence and stillness, the nothingness and poverty to actually turn out to be that. one loves the other. like that. all of them. balog