Nur Narr! Nur Dichter!

In the fading light of dusk, when the dew's solace begins to well down to the earth, invisible, as well as unheard — — for the comforter dew slips on delicate footwear as all gentle consolers — then do you remember, remember, hot heart, how once you thirsted, how after heavenly tears and dewdrops, scorched and weary, you thirsted, while on yellow grass-paths wicked evening glances of the sun ran around you through black trees, blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting. "Of truth the wooer — You? so mocked they — no! only a poet! an animal, a cunning, preying, stealthy one, that must lie, that knowingly, willingly must lie, lusting after prey, colorfully masked, a mask unto itself, a prey unto itself, that — of truth the wooer? ... Only fool! only poet! Just colorfully speaking, from fools' masks motley speaking, climbing about on deceptive word-bridges, on misleading rainbows between false heavens rambling, lurking — That— of truth the wooer? ... Not still, stiff, smooth, cold, become an image, a pillar of God, not set up before temples, a god's gatekeeper: no! hostile to all such statues of virtue, more at home in any wilderness than in temples, full of cat's mischief leaping through every window swiftly! into every chance, sniffing for every jungle, that you in jungles among coloured-shaggy beasts of prey would run sinfully sound and beautiful and colorful, with lusting lips, blissfully mocking, blissfully hellish, blissfully bloodthirsty, plundering, prowling, lying would run ... Or like the eagle that long, long gazes fixedly into abysses, into its abysses ... — oh, how they now spiral downward, thereunder, therein, into ever deeper depths! — Then, suddenly, with straight flight, with a sharp attack swoop down lambs, right down, hot-hungry, lusting for lambs, angry with all lamb-souls, grimly angry with whatever looks virtuous, sheepish, curly-wooled, dull, with lambs' milk-goodwill ... Thus eagle-like, panther-like, are the poet's longings, are your longings under a thousand masks, you fool! you poet! ... You that have looked upon man as god and as sheep —, to tear the God in man like the sheep in man and to laugh in tearing — this, this is your bliss a panther's and eagle's bliss, a poet's and fool's bliss!" ... In the fading light of dusk, when just as the moon's sickle green, between the purple reds, and envious creeps, — of day the enemy, with every step in secret the rose hammocks downsickling, till they sink, sink down pale in nightfall: thus I myself once sank, out of my truth-madness, out of my day-longings, — sank downward, eveningward, shadowward, by one truth burnt and thirsty — do you still remember, remember, hot heart, how then you thirsted? — that I be exiled from all truth! Only fool! Only poet!...