Nature and Our Ideals

Nature

With iron bonds Nature, your procreator
Holds and chains you fast to dust and decay.
Nature, the luring monster, smiling, sun golden,
one moment spurning you on to furious joy of being,
but soon bearing horror and want,
whipping you with the switch of misery,
always destroying and also cryptic,
always Medusa and Sphinx in one.

Through your pulse races and chases in feverish beat
her merciless law,
the eternal law of destruction.
She gave you the will and the force to destroy yourself,
— but to save yourself — this you can never, ever do!

We are all pulling her triumphal chariot —
panting, drenched with sweat and yet in bliss:
because Hope and happiness and every kind of delusion
are swinging as mirages in front of us,
created for us, to mock us:
and we, the army of slaves, poisoned by longing,
call them Ideals —

Thus we storm ahead in languishing haste and mad pursuit
until treacherously, strength abandons us.
The Life Breath dwindles, and farther away than ever
Our goal hovers on gilded clouds,
until helpless and panting, we break down —
Then she cheers demonically! Then she calls out
her cruel “Evoe!” and reins
the brazen spokes of her Biga on,
crushing thousands of victims ...

Revised translation by Michael Finn.