Thus, Will We Walk

Thus, will we walk wide welkin wreckages,
The land of distant will to realize
As if a destiny in living light.

The courtly most of countries longly sought
Will etch before us salamander earth.

See, you’ll state, this stone:
It portals to propinquity of death.
Secreted lamps in flames beneath our means,
Thus, we walk with light.

—Yves Bonnefoy (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)

© Mark Daniel Cohen—Nietzsche Circle, 2007

(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, October 2007)