From High Mountains: Epode

 

Oh life's midday!  Oh festival!  Oh garden of summer!  I wait in restless ecstasy, I stand and watch and wait - where are you, friends?  It is you I await, in readiness day and night.  Come now!  It is time you were here!

 

Was it not for you the glacier today exchanged its grey for roses?  The brook seeks you; and wind and clouds press higher in the blue, longingly they crowd aloft to look for you.

 

For you have I prepared my table in the highest height - who lives so near the stars as I, or who so near the depths of the abyss?  My empire - has an empire ever reached so far?  And my honey - who has tasted the sweetness of it?

 

- And there you are, friends! - But, alas, am I not he you came to visit?  You hesitate, you stare - no, be angry, rather!  Is it no longer - I?  Are hand, step, face transformed?  And what I am, to you friends - I am not?

 

Am I another?  A stranger to myself?  Spring from myself?  A wrestler who subdued himself too often?  Turned his own strength against himself too often, checked and wounded by his own victory?

 

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no-one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers?

 

- Old friends! how pale you look, how full of love and terror!  No - be gone!  Be no angry!  Here - you could not be at home: here in this far domain of ice and rocks - here you must be a huntsman, and like the Alpine goat.

 

A wicked huntsman is what I have become! - See how bent my bow!  He who drew that bow, surely he was the mightiest of men - : but the arrow, alas - ah, no arrow is dangerous as that arrow is dangerous - away! be gone!  For your own preservation!...

 

You turn away? - Oh heart, you have borne up well, your hopes stayed strong: now keep your door open to new friends!  Let the old go!  Let memories go!  If once you were young, now - you are younger!

 

What once united us, the bond of one hope - who still can read the sings love once inscribed therein, now faint and faded?  It is like a parchment - discoloured, scorched - from which the hand shrinks back.

 

No longer friends, but - what shall I call them? - they are the ghosts of friends which at my heart and window knock at night, which gaze on me and say: 'were we once friends?' - oh faded word, once fragrant as the rose!

 

Oh longing of youth, which did not know itself!  Those I longed for, those I deemed changed into kin of mine - that they have aged is what has banished them: only he who changes remains akin to me.

 

Oh life's midday!  Oh second youth!  Oh garden of summer!  I wait in restless ecstasy, I stand and watch and wait - it is friends I await, in readiness day and night, new friends.  Come now!  It is time you were here!

 

This song is done - desire's sweet cry died on the lips: a sorcerer did it, the timely friend, the midday friend - no! ask not who he is - at midday it happened, at midday one became two ...

 

Now, sure of victory together, we celebrate the feast of feasts: friend Zarathustra has come, the guest of guests!  Now the world is laughing, the dread curtain is rent, the wedding day has come for light and darkness ...

 

 

 

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