Nietzsche: That I be banished from every truth, mere fool! Mere poet!

In recently cleared air,
When dew’s consolation
Already falls to earth, Invisible, and unheard too–
For the consoling dew
Wears softened shoes like all mild consolers– :
Remember then, remember, heated heart,
How once you thirsted there,
For heavenly teardrops and drippings of dew
All parched and weary you thirsted,
While there, on yellow paths of grass,
Malicious rays of evening sunlight
Fell through darkened trees about you,
Blinding glowing sunlight-glances, gloating?
‘A suitor of truth? You?’– thus they scoffed–
’No! A mere poet!
A beast, a cunning and quiet-prowling beast of prey,
One that must lie,
Must knowingly, willingly always lie:
Lusting after prey,
Colourfully masked,
To itself a mask,
To itself its prey–
That– is a suitor of truth?
No! A mere fool! A mere poet!
Speaking mere motley,
Colourfully crying out from masks of fools,
Clambering about on mendacious word-bridges,
On colourful rainbow-arcs,
Between deceptive skies
And deceptive earths,
Roaming about, hovering round–
A mere fool! A mere poet!

’ That– is a suitor of truth?
Not still, stiff, smooth, cold,
Become an image,
A pillar of God,
Not posted up before temples,
The gate-guard of a God:
No! Bitter enemy to such truth-statues,
In any desert more at home than in temples, Full of cat-wilfulness,
Jumping through every window
Quick! into every coincidence,
Sniffing at every jungle,
Sniffing addicted-yearningly,
That you might run in jungles
Among variegated beasts of prey
Sinning-healthy and colourful and fine,
Run with lustful lips,
Blissful-scornful, blissful-hellish, blissful-bloodthirsty
After prey, furtive and mendacious:–
‘Or else, like the eagle, who looks long,
Long-staring into abysses,
Into his abysses:—
Oh how they spiral down here
Downward and inward,
Into deeper and deeper depths!–
Then,
Suddenly, arrow-straight,
In quivering flight,
They pounce upon lambs,
Headlong down, hot-hungry,
Lusting for lambs,
Hating all lambs’ souls,
Grimly hating whatever looks
Sheepishly, with lambs’ eyes, curly-wooled,
Grayly, with lamb’s sheep’s wellwishing!

’Thus, then,
Eagle-like, panther-like
Are the poet’s yearnings,
Are your yearnings behind a thousand masks,
You fool! You poet!

’You who have now seen man
As God and sheep– :
To tear apart the God in man,
As the sheep in man,
And, while tearing, to laugh–

‘ That, that is your blissfulness!
A panther’s and an eagle’s blissfulness!
A poet’s and a fool’s blissfulness!’—
In recently cleared air,
When the moon’s thin sickle
Slides green and envious
’Twixt purple twilights:
– hostile toward day,
With every step secretly
Reaping away at hanging
Roses, till they fall, pale now,
And sink down in the pit of night:–
Thus did I myself sink once
Away from my truth-madness,
Away from my day-yearnings,
Weary of the day, sick from the light,
– sank downward, evening-ward, shadow-ward:
Thirsty and scorched
By a single truth:
– do you recall, recall still, heated heart,
How much you thirsted then?–
That I be banished
From every truth,
Mere fool!
Mere poet!

• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Song of Melancholy, III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)