Yet it is fearful how God randomly
Scatters the living, and how very far.
And how fearful it was to leave
The sight of dear friends and walk off
Alone into the mountains, so that
Afterwards the divine spirit could
Be recognized again in unity.
It hadn't been prophesied to them:
In fact it seized them right by the hair
Just at the moment when the fugitive
God looked back, and they called out to him
To stop, and they reached their hands to
One another as if bound by a golden rope,
And called it evil -
But when he dies, he whom beauty
Loved most of all, so that a miracle
Surrounded him, and he was
Chosen by the gods;
And when those who live after,
Remembering him, constantly become
Confused and no longer understand
One another; and when sand and
Willows aren't carried off
By floods, or the temples struck down;
When the fame of the demi-god
And his disciples vanishes and
Even the Highest turns aside his
Countenance, so that nothing
Immortal can be seen either
In heaven or upon the green earth -
What does all this mean?
Hoelderlin, The God is near, and hard to grasp
