It was at the foot of the penultimate tower that the poet (who had seemed remote from the wonders that were a marvel to all) recited the brief composition that today we link indissolubly to his name and that, as the most elegant historians repeat, presented him with immortality and death. The text has been lost; there are those who believe that it consisted of a line of verse; others, of a single word. What is certain, and incredible, is that all the enormous palace was, in its most minute details, there in the poem, with each illustrious porcelain and each design on each porcelain and the penumbrae and the light of each dawn and twilight, and each unfortunate or happy instant in the glorious dynasties of mortals, of gods and of dragons that had inhabited it from the unfathomable past. Everyone was silent, but the Emperor exclaimed: You have robbed me of my palace! And the executioner's iron sword cut the poet down.