
A SUPPLE WREATH OF MYRTLE
Robert Haas
Poor Nietzsche in Turin, eating sausage his mother
Mails to him from Basel. A rented room,
A small square window framing August clouds
Above the mountain. Brooding on the form
Of things: the dangling spur
Of an Alpine columbine, winter-tortured trunks
Of cedar in the summer sun, the warp in the aspen’s trunk
Where it torqued up through the snowpack.
“Every where the wasteland grows; woe
To him whose wasteland is within.”
Dying of syphilis. Trimming a luxuriant mustache.
In love with the opera of Bizet.
Thank you for sharing. Haas is another of my favorite poets, and Nietzsche one of the few philosophers I actually enjoy reading. The final two stanzas evoke feelings in dread as well as sadness in me :(
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