My illness has been my greatest boon: it unblocked me,
it gave me the courage to be myself. - Friedrich Nietzsche
When fame had found him
long gone to madness the
idea of the nation itself
- a blue-lensed delicate eye -
mimicked the mapmaker's
method of triangulation
using time not place as the
fixed point —
to see something as a whole
one must have two eyes
one of love and one of hate
the sublime and the ridiculous
accommodate
Accommodate —
his body
softening
of the brain
left to lie in darkness
a week at a time
leeches attached
to ears to draw blood
down from his head
silver nitrate, opium
and tannic acid enemas
to draw blood
furthest down
Yet he reasons that the
constant taste of blood
in his mouth turns affliction
into an advantage
has particular appeal
to the shipwrecked —
still he furies at tendencies
toward submission
toward self-enslavement
Still at work even in
madness some final
surmises
strongly felt—
Style is concern
vulnerable to distortion
Being a philosopher of perhaps
he once ended a book with 'Or? —'
Being a philosopher of endings
of final reckonings
of certain shipwreck
totally blind
he surmises
weakly upon
propped pillows
his eyebrows
his mustache
outgrowing
their ledgers
his fatal sister declaritively
writes —
'in being found
he lived well who hid well'
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
A refined poetic imagination, Warren Falcon. You may like to read my poem, Love And Iust. Thank you.