Silence away my cry
Or gaze ahead and pry
To fight my fate and rectify
The ailments and my weary sigh

Or spawn me a fly
Grant me what I can’t buy
With man’s wealth or gold’s dye—
Eternity and I shan’t die

Dare The Lord eye to eye
Scheme and plot on the sly
You lost your way and passed by
The only passage—a needle’s eye

”To those who reject Our signs and treat them with arrogance, no opening will there be of the gates of heaven, nor will they enter the garden, until the camel can pass through the eye of the needle: Such is Our reward for those in sin.”
— Surah 7 (The Heights)

Such there is Night، not Night as ours—Unhappy Folk
— J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Unhappy Folk: unhappyfolk.org
Telegram: unhappyfolk.t.me
Mail: msg@unhappyfolk.org

Possible Interpretation

The narrator orchestrates a dramatic entrapment, voicing humanity’s forbidden desires to force self-recognition. By commanding “Grant me what I can’t buy,” the speaker articulates what the listener secretly craves—transcendence through control rather than surrender. The provocations escalate: scheme against death, challenge whatever gods you’ve fashioned, treat divinity as an adversary to outwit.

This isn’t pastoral guidance but theatrical accusation. The narrator performs humanity’s spiritual arrogance as grotesque pantomime, daring the listener to recognise themselves in it. “You lost your way” becomes devastating because the narrator has just walked the listener through every step of that loss, making complicity unavoidable.

The theological argument cuts across traditions: humans perpetually make gods of wealth, ambition, even their own cunning resistance to mortality. The narrator’s provocation exposes this pattern not through gentle correction but through aggressive mimicry—speaking the listener’s unconscious theology aloud until its absurdity and doom become undeniable. The needle’s eye isn’t salvation offered but the narrow truth the listener has already rejected by desiring everything the poem mockingly commands.