Occidental Eyes III

To my father Henri, because the evils of this world find no theodicy anywhere and because of the fate of Marxism and Existentialism -the greatest movements of our age in the life of the mind, found their uncanny homes along the banks of the river where the murderers sipped the nectars from the lives of our people and in the very end we decided by concensus that only life itself is what we can offer to the world.

Ich stamme ab dieser Wahrheit, die ungekannt in unserer Welt einmals würdt
Und diese Wahrheit findet keine Heimat vor diesem Umkreis des Lebens
Danach, ich erweitere und erfolge, aber zunächst bin ich nicht zwischen den Menschen
Dafür aller Respekt in dieser Gleichzeitigkeit wobei finde ich nicht Dich,
Aber Deine Anspruch und mein Wiederspruch gegen dem Lebens.

I hear those voices summoning me to the life and the truth
Calling from far, from valleys, from Vienna, from Cain's damnation
And I awake in slumber to what you always predicted
The fall of my ways, the fall of man, of all men
I'm empowered by such loss of the self, of the world
By the most worldless and unresponsive love
The desire of what is not had, the love of what is never desired
The demolishing of the structures on which our life is supported
And their shift through a sift into a sewer that filters and filthies the oils and the airs
In the most tranquil and silent despair
As the oceans take away our beloved ones, our waters, in aeroplane flights
Lights that no longer glimmer in the dark but with a sickly fever
That can at best increase our hope, our hope beyond hope
In the political man, that knew right and wrong
We're neither of those, rather wafting from our tree
The branchtree of life, of love, of hate
The most disreputed positions, concepts, endeavours
And you taught me in that language I did not know
The importance of this salvation, of this sacred history
That today amounts to everything I can ever comprehend
About God, about world, about desire as though men were no more
In the uncanny intensity of the slow lives we lead
Our struggles, so little and so stupid
Our loves, so bereft of meaning and of humanity
Against ourselves, against everything we knew
It's your fault, that a philosopher I'd be
You offered me no other political choices
But to betray you and everybody else
Everybody else who loved me
And the loveless ones, I clinged onto
As though onto a bottle that contains the magic elixir
You remind me of Jesus at times
And of that love that could never before me, for me
Or in me, in the language of philosophers
That you despised, no less than you despised me
But in these warm nights when spring breaks forth
I only keep you company by doing so for myself
Encountering the mirror in which the churches display
With irrational violence how little we understand
And what a fool play I've made of myself
In loving the man that can love no world, no one
Only there I meet the sights and the faces
Of the little Swiss towns and the unspeakable language
I don't feel anymore the same
I can't believe in this world anymore
And in this endeavour
I'm indebted to no one but you
Your faithlessness, your hopelessness
Is the only love I have in store
And my contempt, is your contempt
My Cain, my Josef, my valley
They all belong to you
And they go forth from the world
Unable to find their object of love
Because I remain here
Stone-like and stale, still
Wordly but mute
In your dark eyes
Unlike mine, mad pieces of light
The light can no longer shine forth
Only if they suffer
Their own abscence
Their nothingness
You were my Endymion
And only seven years later I'd knew it
When it was too late
For both of us
To live, or to undie each other
You're like his father
You gave me in, into the hands of a fox
And only then around laurels and stones
I'd feel anything at all
I'd die everyday
As though one undies a tree
A branchtree of worldly wisdoms
You gave me in
To the Occident
And thereby I deathened my own person
If only for the sake of them
But the night thwarts beneath this bruise
And the redemption is always late one day
And so were you
For more than twenty years
You've left me over
Leavened me over
The cliffs, the heights, the stories
I can no longer be true
Unless I encounter the embrace
That sips the nectars of my life
Of my inability to live
In a foreign language
In another man
In the sight of that woman
Far beyond those green tops of the mountains
Whereby I hid from you
From my own destiny
That even in the desert
Found me unkind and naked
Unprepared
To journey again
And you father
You resemble Augustine
Both you and God
In your deaths
That can never frighten Jerusalem
Or shake my beliefs
My un-love