So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths—
But is that an answer?

These lines frame human questioning—especially metaphysical or existential inquiry—as persistent and repetitive, continuing “over and over” until death (“a handful of earth” thrown onto the grave) literally silences the speaker. The final challenge, “But is that an answer?”, rejects the idea that death resolves the questions it ends. The effect is both skeptical and poignant: mortality provides closure only in the practical sense of stopping speech, not in the intellectual or spiritual sense of providing truth. In Heine’s characteristic mode, the passage blends lyric intensity with irony, turning a grave-side image into a critique of easy consolations and of any worldview that treats death as a satisfying explanation.