What are the motifs in Variations on Nothing by Giuseppe Ungaretti?

Irony and the Significance of "Nothing" is a recurring idea in the prose. A direct offshoot of the central theme is the idea of the ultimate irony in discovering just how significant "nothing" really is. From the title of the poem through each of its little vignettes of variations, the point seems to be that these images depict trivial aspects of life on earth. The sand in the hourglass is bluntly called "negligible," and the human hand that resets the timepiece seems to do so merely as a rote function. The hand is just a hand—no body or face or mind is connected to render it a real or more complete person. And the clouds too are just everyday objects that come and go across the sky, changing shape and color with hardly anyone noticing their existence. Ungaretti's selection of such apparently immaterial things and events helps set the stage for a surprising turnabout in the end.