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Between Birds of Prey |
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Who would here descend? |
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How soon is he swallowed up by the depths? |
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Thou, Zarathoestra, still lovesth the abysses |
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Lovesth them as dosth the fur tree |
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The fur flings its roots |
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And the rock itself gazes |
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Shuddering at the depths |
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The fur pauses before the abysses where all around |
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Would feign descent amid the impatience of wild, rolling, leaping torrents |
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It waits so patient, stern, and silent |
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Lonely... |
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Lonely, who would venture here? |
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To be guest, to be thy guest |
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A bird of prey, per chance |
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Joyous at other's misfortune |
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Will cling persistent to the heir of the steadfast watcher |
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With frenzied laughter, a vulture's laughter |
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Wherefor so steadfast? |
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Mocks he so cruel |
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He must have wings who loves the abyss |
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He must not stay on the cliff |
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As thou, who hangesth there |
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Oh Zarathustra |
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Cruelest nimrod! |
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Of late still a hunter of God |
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A spider's web, to capture virtue |
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An arrow of evil |
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Now hunted by thyself |
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Thine own prey |
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Caught in the grip of thine own soul |
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Now lonely to me and thee |
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Twofold in thine own knowledge |
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'Mid a hundred mirrors |
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False to thyself |
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'Mid a hundred memories |
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Uncertain and weary from every wound |
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shivering at every frost |
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Throttled in thine own noose |
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Self-knower |
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Self-hangman |
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Why didsth bind thyself |
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with the noose of thy wisdom? |
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Why luresth thyself |
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To the old serpent's paradise? |
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Why stowesth into thyself |
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Thyself? |
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A sick man now |
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Sick of serpent's poison |
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A captive now |
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Who has drawn the hardest lot |
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In thine own shaft |
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Now doesth thou workesth |
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In thine own cavern? |
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Digging in thyself |
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Helpless quite |
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stiff, a cold corpse |
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Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens |
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Overburdened by thyself |
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A knower, a self-knower |
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The wise Zarathoestra |
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Thou soughtesth the heaviest burden |
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So foundesth thou thyself |
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And cansth not shake thyself off |
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Watching |
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Crouching |
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One that stands up right no more |
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Thou with grow deformed |
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Even in thy grave |
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Deformed spirit |
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And of late, still so proud |
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On all the stilts of thy pride |
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Of late, still the godless hermit, |
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The hermit with one comrade, the devil |
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The scarlet prince of every devilmen's |
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Now between two nothings |
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Huddled up a question mark |
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A weary riddle |
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A riddle for vultures |
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They will solve thee |
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they hunger already for thy solution |
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They flutter already about their riddle |
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About thee |
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The doomed one |
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Oh Zarathoestra |
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Self-knower |
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Self-hangman |
