The Beacon Friedrich Nietzsche

Here, where an island grew between seas,
A stone altar steeply piled up,
Here beneath blackened sky,
Zarathustra lit his mountain fire,
The beacon for mariners driven off course,
The question mark for those who have answers ...

This flame with a white-grey belly —
Flickers its greedy tongue into the cold beyond,
Bends its neck towards ever purer heights —
A raised serpent of impatience:
This signal I placed before me.

My soul is this flame,
Insatiable for new expanses
To blaze upward, upward in silent passion.
Why did Zarathustra flee from animals and men?
Why did he run away suddenly from all settled lands?
Six solitudes he knew already —
But the sea itself was not lonely enough for him,
The island let him rise, on the mountain he became the flame,
Into a seventh solitude
Searching now, he casts a hook over his head.

Lost mariners! Wreckage of ancient stars!
You seas of the future! Unexplored sky!
Now I cast my hook towards all solitary ones:
Give an answer to the impatience of the flame,
Catch me, fisherman on high mountains,
My seventh ultimate solitude! — —