we hear from echo to echo, year to year, our words rolling through a tunnel with no end

Life never answers. 

It has no ears and doesn't hear us; 

it doesn't speak, it has no tongue. 

It neither goes nor stays: 

we are the ones who speak, 

the ones who go, 

while we hear from echo to echo, year to year, 

our words rolling through a tunnel with no end. 

That which we call life 

hears itself within us, speaks with our tongues, 

and through us, knows itself. 

[Octavio Paz {1914-1998}, from 'Response and Reconciliation', in The Poems of Octavio Paz - trans. by Eliot Weinberger]