Explanation: Hourglass of the Wind
The composition presents itself as a metaphysical elegy on the transitory nature of existence and memory. The use of synesthetic images—“nameless alleys,” “breath of stone”—immediately creates an existential, non-geographical landscape, suggesting a dreamlike or archetypal dimension, typical of great reflections on inner journeys.
The semantic and metaphorical core of the poem is the hourglass of wind. This hybrid object is the catalyst that transforms time from an abstract concept into physical material, a sand that does not flow by gravity but is carried by the wind. The wind, element of chance and dissolution, becomes here an implacable measurer. The hourglass itself is a metaphor for destiny or the perception of human time: a slow, inexorable process that measures the flow of moments without being able to stop or fully comprehend its raw material.
The setting in “nameless alleys of the invisible city” (an obvious reference to certain suggestions by Italo Calvino) immediately establishes the idea of a place of absence and potential. These alleys are not mapped, but exist only in memory or in dreams; they are the ideal stage for loss and dissolution. The “lost footsteps dissolve in a breath of stone” symbolize the impossibility of completely recovering the past; every trace, even if solid as stone, is destined to be eroded by the invisible force of time and oblivion.
The most subtle and profound element is the function of the “echo.” The echo is not a returning sound, but something that “measures what is unseen.” This suggests that true meaning or ultimate experience are not material, but reside in the interval between sounds, in the silence of lack.
The text then develops two metaphors for memory and illusion: each grain is a “window closed upon the dawn” (dawn symbolizes beginning or revelation, but the fact that it is closed denies direct access to truth) and every current tells of “streets that do not exist.” Here, the auto-deceiving nature of human memory is explored: we tend to narrate paths we never took, constructing narrative realities upon what was merely desire or fantasy.
The philosophical climax is reached with the realization that the only possible revelation occurs not through counting grains, but when “until the air reveals the face of who is not there.” The individual dissolves into their own temporal and spatial contingency. The poem leaves us with a sense of melancholic acceptance: existence is a continuous sounding of absence, where ultimate truth resides in the very act of measuring what can never be fully possessed or identified. It is a meditation on the transience of the self and the enigmatic beauty of being in becoming.