I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below,
many devils
Running, leaping,
And carousing in
sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said: "Comrade!
Brother!"
You tell me this is God?
I
tell you this is a printed list,
A burning candle and an ass. |
|
A god in
wrath
Was beating a man;
He cuffed him loudly
With
thunderous blows
That rang and rolled over the earth.
All
people came running.
The man screamed and struggled,
And bit
madly at the feet of the god.
The people cried:
"Ah, what a
wicked man!"
And—
"Ah, what a redoubtable god!" |
|
I saw
a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was
disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I
said.
"You can never —"
"You lie," he
cried,
And ran on. |
|
The
wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with
astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he
said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long
time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular
knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other
roads." |
|
"Think as
I think," said a man,
"Or you are abominably wicked;
You are
a toad."
And after I had thought of it,
I said, "I will,
then, be a toad." |
|
A man said to
the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The
fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation." |
|
In a lonely place
I encounter a
sage
Who sat, all still,
Regarding a newspaper.
He accosted
me:
"Sir, what is this?"
Then I saw that I was greater,
Aye, greater
than this sage.
I answered him at once:
"Old, old man, it is the wisdom
of the age."
The sage looked upon me with
admiration. |
|
"And the sins of the fathers shall
be visited upon the heads of the children, even unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me."
Well, then, I hate Thee,
unrighteous picture;
Wicked image, I hate Thee;
So strike
with Thy vengeance
The heads of those little men
Who come
blindly.
It will be a brave thing.
Exodus 20:5 Holy
Bible, International Version:
"...for I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous
God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me."
2.Mose 20:5, Übersetzung Martin
Luther:
"Denn ich, der Herr, dein Gott, bin ein eifriger Gott, der da
heimsucht der Väter Missetat an den Kindern bis in das dritte und vierte
Glied, die mich hassen;" |
|
There were many who went in huddled
procession,
They knew not whither;
But, at any rate, success or
calamity
Would attend all in equality.
There was one who sought a new road.
He went into
direful thickets,
And ultimately he died thus, alone;
But they said he
had courage. |
|
A learned man came to me
once.
He said: "I know the way,—come."
And I was overjoyed at
this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were
useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my
friend;
But at last he cried: "I am lost." |
|
Supposing that I should have
the courage
To let a red sword of virtue
Plunge into my heart
Letting
to the weeds of the ground
My sinful blood,
What can you offer me?
A
gardened castle?
A flowered kingdom?
What? A hope?
Then hence with your red sword of
virtue. |
|
A
spirit sped
Through spaces of night;
And as he sped, he
called:
"God! God!"
He went through valleys
Of black
death-slime,
Ever calling:
"God! God!"
Their
echoes
From crevice and cavern
Mocked him:
"God!
God! God!"
Fleetly into the plains of space
He went, ever
calling:
"God! God!"
Eventually, then, he
screamed,
Mad in denial:
"Ah, there is no God!"
A
swift hand,
A sword from the sky,
Smote him,
And he
was dead |
|
Many workmen
Built a huge ball of
masonry
Upon a mountain-top.
Then they went to the valley
below,
And turned to behold their work.
"It is grand," they
said;
They loved the thing.
Of a sudden, it moved:
It came upon
them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had
opportunity to squeal. |
|
A man saw a ball of gold in the
sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it—
was
clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When
the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of
gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the
heavens, it was a ball of gold. |
|
If I should cast off this
tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing
there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant,—
What
then? |
|
There was a man with tongue of
wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable
But there was
one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the
man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was
content. |
|
When the prophet, a complacent fat
man,
Arrived at the mountain-top
He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!
I
intended to see good white lands
And bad black lands—
But the scene
is grey." |
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