He listened to a talk he had written be translated back to him in a language once spoken within a periphery of a continent.  The translator seemed to be stringing words into ever longer ones, stringing them so tight as to, in effect, deliver a long wail that took no breath.  He was even then aware of being sometimes guilty of turning his talks into pleas, but that he may have moved on way beyond that alarmed him.  He braced himself for how the very end of his talk would sound.  He anticipated a breathless collapse in the way the translator was reading, but got, instead, the last few sentences of his talk read in a whisper, as if the translator had by then taken to muttering to herself.  In fact, he missed the end when it did all of a sudden come.  He hadn’t anticipated it; he only suddenly realized it.  This was the first time in his talks when, after rendering the story of a problem in all its factors, he had proposed no solutions, resolutions, nor options.  He had just ended it.  The translator was clearer about it:  The period punctuates too suddenly, she had said, as if The End is in a hurry.