A Poem For Today - The Heaviest Burden

[KEN DICKINSON]



The Heaviest Burden

What, if some day or night, 

a demon were to steal after you

into your loneliest loneliness 

and say to you: 

This life, as you now live it 

and have lived it, 

you will have to live once more 

and innumerable times more;

And there will be nothing new in it, 

but every pain and every joy 

and every thought and sigh… 

must return to you

all in the same succession and sequence

even this spider and this moonlight 

between the trees 

and even this moment and I myself. 

The eternal hourglass of existence 

is turned over again and again

and you with it, speck of dust!’ 

Would you not throw yourself down 

and gnash your teeth 

and curse the demon who spoke thus? 

Or have you once experienced

a tremendous moment 

when you would have answered him:

You are a god, and never have I heard 

anything more divine!’ 

If this thought were to gain possession of you

it would change you as you are, 

or perhaps crush you. 

The question in each and every thing, 

do you want this once more 

and innumerable times more?

would lie upon your actions 

as the greatest weight. 

Or how well disposed

would you have to become

to yourself and to life 

to crave nothing more fervently

than this ultimate eternal confirmation

and seal?

Friedrich Nietzsche, 

The Gay Science

With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

Sent from my iPhone