Another Reason by Carl Dennis

Author:Carl Dennis
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

EVEN NIETZSCHE

Even Nietzsche, who regarded benevolence

As the first temptation, wanted to help his readers,

Not leave them stymied. First to undo their faith

In the old law and the new. Then to ask each

To come up with a law of his own devising

That required obedience to himself.

Sick in body, he wanted his readers to be robust.

Vexed in spirit, he wanted them to achieve serenity.

The day he collapsed on the street while running

To stop a hackney driver from beating his horse

He may have intended not only to shield the horse

But to show the driver that giving pain

Isn’t the only way to feel powerful.

Don’t waste your strength, he hoped to tell him,

On resenting your customers for making you wait

In the rain today. Learn to watch their antics

From a seat in the balcony while you endow

Your part in the play with grace, with style.

So Nietzsche tried to observe himself

Playing the part of prophet with gusto

Even when no one noticed he’d smashed the idols

That cast their shadow on earthly life,

When no one thanked him for his years of breathing

The acrid dust clouds of dogma shards.

At the end, when he called himself “the Antichrist,”

It’s possible that behind the self-inflation

He may have been mocking himself

For preaching a gospel that drew no crowds,

That won him no disciples.

It must have been hard for him to preserve his faith

That readers to come, in times more friendly,

Would think of him as their benefactor.

But he had to try. Not for him,

If he could help it, the killjoy suspicion

That a prophet’s toil wasn’t worth the trouble,

That a shrewder man would have chosen a softer trade.

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