As Nietzsche -in the sudden clarity of madness-
Threw his arms around a horse’s neck
And would not let go,
So must he cling to the world.
Walking, talking and dressing
Like some country bumpkin,
The philosopher-king,
From his simple hut on a Black Forest hillside,
Gazed out across the valley to the Alps beyond.
His tools were all around him,
As he walked the wooded paths,
Through glades and clearings,
And skied downslope in winter.
Alone with his books and the nightstorms,
A Pre-Socratic, crabbed and hungry
For the sources, the roots of things,,
He built,like a voyageur his canoe,
A mountaindweller’s dialect all his own.
He must remember what the world had forgotten,
Work like a woodcutter at his task
And give no quarter to fools.
Forking and reforking, the path
Led through dark firs,on Death Mountain,
Where a sad and sovereign intellect,
Refusing the world’s interference,
Could run to its own cruel limits
Pretending that knowledge was love.
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