in parentheses

At first, I like many other men and women before my dawning was scared to touch the burning flame, I spoke: if I but touch a leaf, will will remain me? if I but touch a leaf, will love remain me? if I but touch a leaf, will life remain me?

Above me, heaven brightened with neon thunder and the skies sooted and there came a broken-levee of rain. But there I stood fearing the mystery of an endless burning flame.

And I stood 40 passings of the earth, amidst the battering ring of explosions and the collisions of like people and like worlds, and there dauntless in quandary amidst the smoke and the mist that steadied a haze above the new earth, and through my time, and through all the collected and infinitesimal time of us all, there I continued a pillar of thought from heaven’s deep to the ocean’s dark, fearing to touch the burning flame.

And then a whisper came to me: the world is of your hands. So I touched the flame.