The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away - Closing

His bayonet clanking at his side, he crawls toward the stone steps at the bank entrance where a certain party waits, bullet-riddled, an army sword held high in one hand, the other outstretched to embrace him, shot in the back and dying. His eyes, filled with tears and his own blood, are already blind to all things in reality, but the colossal chrysanthemum topped with a purple aurora illuminated the darkness behind his closed lids more radiantly than any light he has ever seen. His head nothing more than a dark void now, the blood all drained away, he is no longer certain whether the person awaiting him at the top of the stone steps is a certain party, but if he can crawl just one yard more, digging at the hot ground with his bullet-broken hands, he will reach the feet of the person unmistakably awaiting him, whoever may be, and his blood and his tears will be wiped away.
[[Exasperated by his refusal to remove the head-phones, a resourceful doctor plugs a microphone into the tape recorder, connects the headphones to a monitor and begins to speak through them, It's time we started being honest with one another about your condition, you must understand and cooperate. Your condition ... Having swiftly broken the connection to his consciousness, "he" is deaf to any further disturbance from the outside. Gasping in the shrill voice of a ten-year-old on the verge of death, distorting the melody in a multitude of ways, "he" continues to sing, Let us sing a song of cheer again, Happy Days are here again!]]