Who would here descend,
How soon
Is he swallowed up by the dephts!
Thou, Zarathustra,
Still lovest the abysses
Lovest them as doth the fir tree?
The fir flings it's roots, where
The rock self gazes
Shuddering at the depths
The fir pauses before the abysses,
Where all around,
Would feign descend,
Amid the impatience
Of wild rolling, leaping currents
It waits so patient, stern and silent,
Lonely
Lonely
Who would venture here
To be guest,
To be thy guest?
A bird of pray per chance,
Joyious at others misfortune,
Will cling persistent,
To the heir of his steadfast watcher,
With frenzy laughter,
A vulture's laughter
Wherefore so steadfast?
Mocks he so cruel,
He must have wings, who love the abyss,
He must not stay on the cliff,
As thou, who hangest there!
Oh Zarathustra,
Cruelest nimrod!
Of late still a hunter of God,
A spider's web to capture virtue,
An arrow of evil!
Now,
Hunted by thyself,
Thine own prey,
Caught in the grip of thy own soul
Now,
Lonely to me and thee,
To fold in thy own knowledge,
Amid a hundred mirrors,
False to thyself.
With a hundred
Memories,
Uncertain and weary in every wound,
Shimmering, at every frost,
Throttled, in thy own noose,
Self-knower!
self-hangman!
Why didst bine thyself
With the noose of thy wisdom?
Why lureth thyself,
To the old serpent's paradise?
Why stolest into thyself
Thyself?
A sick man now,
Sick of serpents poison,
A captive now,
Who has drawn the hardest lot:
In thy own shaft
Now, does thou workest,
In thine own cavern.
Digging at thyself,
Helpless quite,
Stiff,
A cold corpse
Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens,
Overburdened by thyself,
A knower,
A self-knower!
The wise Zarathustra!
Thou soughtest the heaviest burden
So foundest thou thyself,
And canst not shake thyself off
Watching,
Crouching,
One that stands upright no more!
Thy will prow deform,
Even thy grave deformed spirit!
And of late still so proud,
On all stilts of thy pride!
Of late still the godless hermit,
The hermit with one comrade - the devil,
The scarlet prince, every devilment!
Now,
between two nothings,
Huddled up,
A question mark,
A weary riddle
A riddle for vultures
They will solve thee,
They hunger already for thy solution,
They flutter already, above their riddle,
Above thee, the doomed one,
Oh Zarathustra!
Self-knower!
self-hangman!
From a poem by Friedrich Nietzsche
