The Rhapsodist of Rocken

The Philosopher has to be
the bad conscience of his age.

—Nietzsche

Self-overcoming creative destroyer,
Grayland dancer, Dionysian weed,
Court jester to the dichotomous daze—

To pant the bloodwords appassionato,
Hurting and happy under the prick of thorns
Stinging in tame brains, the iron lines
Scraping bone, tapping at the marrow,
Making ready the great transfusion.
Somewhere between Socrates and Jesus, in
An ever-recurring sequel of somedays,
The poet-barker peeked and screamed at the mirror
Still hanging on every ready wall,
Envisioning the master sublimaters
Asleep in these cells like so many ewes
That stand and gaze beyond the shepherd's glen.

How long you wandered through your homelands,
Good European, chasing or fleeing shadows,
Before that day—eleven years too soon—
Of Zarathustra's final going down.
Mad symbolic prophet of an epoch,
Mentor/victim of all-too-humankind,
The song still echoes on the deep rolling seas.
I hear the breakers haunt the scalded strand
As softly as a lover whispering, yes.

—John Pigeon