It was a purple colored paperback book
I borrowed from my niece,

the selected or collected works of Nietzsche

…which I only read much later,
as I slowly gathered time
and nerve.

Perhaps it was that the pain I had in those days
was so close to each moment’s experience;

perhaps I was generally down and depressed,
waiting for something to happen
which would not materialize,

but it was then
I began to read his works.

And I went with him
everywhere that he went,
and; I imagined, beyond…
if that is possible.

The will to power,
the will to will,
the rise of European nihilism,
the proclamation
of the death of God,

the transvaluation of all values…

the stirring prose,
the power of the aphorism
coming hard on the trail
of Machiavelli’s “Discourses,”
pulling me up
upon Zarathustra’s Mountain,
licking my wounded vanities,

grappling for the first time
seriously
with my ignorances
and bluster
and arrogance which seemed then to pale
next to his.

A ready kinship as philologist
and amateur musician,
I tried to feel
as substance
and author.

Into every nook and cranny,
the dizzying pace of somersaults
trying to know each critical point
in thought,

to move beyond each next beyond,
always aware that his had led to
an enduring insanity
in which he assured himself
that his destiny was fulfilled
because he had fulfilled destiny.

His attack upon morality,
upon the meekness
and weakness of a love preachment,

redirected
into my own becomingness,

revolving through my own being
as I was myself
attacking the foundations of language’s preeminence,

took me up to the heights he praised
and into the depths
he seemed to think
were necessary;

to climb up to the next place.