Tell a wise person or else keep silent

For the massman will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive

And what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm waters of the love nights

Where you were begotten,

Where you have begotten,

A strange feeling comes over you

When you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in this obsession with darkness

And a desire for higher love making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.

And now, arriving in magic, flying

and finally, insane for the light

You are the butterfly.

And you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced this,

To die and so to grow,

You are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.

 -----Goethe

 

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