William S. Burroughs: The Cat Inside

  The cry I heard through Ruski was not only his signal of distress. It was a sad, plaintive voice of lost spirits, the grief that comes from knowing you are the last of your kind. There can be no witness to this grief. No witnesses remain. It must have happened many times in the past. It is happening now. Endangered species. Not just those that actually exist, or existed at one time and died, but all the creatures that might have existed.
  A hope. A chance. The chance lost. The hope dying. A cry following the only one who could hear it when he is already too far away to hear, an aching, wrenching sadness. This is grief without witness. "You are the last. Last human crying." The cry is very old. Very few can hear it. Very painful. The chance was there for an enchanted moment. The chance was lost. Wrong turn. Wrong time. Too soon. Too late. To invoke all-out magic is to risk the terrible price of failure. To know that chance was lost because you failed. This grief can kill.