This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

Treacherous ashes hide
The fires through which you stride

So this wonderful city
Has only dead ashes for me.

The line storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,...

Then I will speak upon the ashes.

To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

Your face had become dark, and, upon the day's awakening, your ashes will disperse themselves throughout the garden.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky- all that which lies beyond the end of the roads.

How could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

No single bone in my body is holy -
It is but an ash heap of stinking bones.
Dig a deep hole and there bury these remains
Thus, not a grain of dust will stain
The green mountains.

I am ashes where once I was fire...

The road stretches before us, shrouded in a darkness transitioning into dawn as it leads me back to you.