Between Birds of Prey - Blood Axis

Who would here descend?

How soon is he swallowed up by the depths?

Thou, Zarathustra, still lovesth the abysses

Lovesth them as doth the fir-tree

The fir flings its roots

And the rock itself gazes

Shuddering at the depths

The fir pauses before the abysses

Where all around

Would feign descent amid the impatience of wild

Rolling, leaping torrents

It waits so patient, stern, and silent, lonely

Lonely, who would venture here

To be guest, to be thy guest

A bird of prey, per chance

Joyous at other’s misfortune

Will cling persistent to the heir of the steadfast watcher

With frenzied laughter, a vulture’s laughter

Wherefor so steadfast?

Mocks he so cruel

He must have wings who loves the abyss

He must not stay on the cliff

As thou, who hangesth there

Oh Zarathustra

Cruelest nimrod!

Of late still a hunter of God

A spider’s web, to capture virtue

An arrow of evil

Now hunted by thyself

Thine own prey

Caught in the grip of thine own soul

Now lonely to me and thee

Twofold in thine own knowledge

'Mid a hundred mirrors

False to thyself

'Mid a hundred memories

Uncertain and weary from every wound

Shivering at every frost

Throttled in thine own noose

Self-knower

Self-hangman

Why didsth bind thyself

With the noose of thy wisdom?

Why luresth thyself

To the old serpent’s paradise?

Why stowesth into thyself

Thyself?

A sick man now

Sick of serpent’s poison

A captive now

Who has drawn the hardest lot

In thine own shaft

Now doesth thou workesth

In thine own cavern?

Digging at thyself

Helpless quite

Stiff, a cold corpse

Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens

Overburdened by thyself

A knower, a self-knower

The wise Zarathustra

Thou soughtesth the heaviest burden

So foundesth thou thyself

And cansth not shake thyself off

Watching

Crouching

One that stands up right no more

Thou with grow deformed

Even in thy grave

Deformed spirit

And of late, still so proud

On all the stilts of thy pride

Of late, still the godless hermit

The hermit with one comrade, the devil

The scarlet prince of every devilmen’s

Now between two nothings

Huddled up a questionmark

A weary riddle

A riddle for vultures

They will solve thee

They hunger already for thy solution

They flutter already about their riddle

About thee

The doomed one

Oh Zarathustra

Self-knower

Self-hangman