Echoes of the world below

A man wakes up. He looks out of the window, sees the dawn coming, pale and ravenous, bearing on its face the imprint of the infinite nameless pain that has haunted the night, that has sunk with it but still hovers in the heart of man. The man, a human, made of ashes and dust, is surrounded by a thousand faces: those he loves, those he hates, those who are indifferent to him, even the arrogant stump of a mischievous cat... The crowd multiplies, swells, seems to say to him, with increasing insistence: "What about us?"