"Brod und Wein 7.
But Friend, we have come too late. That yes, the Gods do live
But up above our heads, in some other world;
They endlessly work on, and seem to pay little heed,
Whether we live or die; so much they spare us, the Heavenly Ones.
For our frail vessel is not always able to hold them fast forever;
Only sometimes can man bear divine fullness.
A dream of them so then drives this life. Wandering,
Helps—like sleep—and necessity and night strengthen,
Until the heroes are grown enough in the bronze cradle,
With hearts as strong, in their nature, alike to the Heavenly Gods;
Thundering they roar awake. Yet often it seems to me,
It is better to stay sleeping than to exist so without companions.
How to wait, and what to do in the meantime and what to say--
I don’t know. And what are poets for in such a meagre time?
But they are, you say, like the Wine-God’s holy priests,
Who move from land to land in the sacred night."
—Hölderlin tr A.V. Marraccini via
"The story our grandchildren, if any, will tell about the second and third decades of this new century is very much one of the rejection of a kinder, wiser America opening up to a post-Cold War planet, just as little Vlad’s grandkids will write of his sad attempts to reconstruct Ye Olde Soviet Union, nostalgia flecked with bombs and drone warfare." —Ron Silliman via
