Soneto

(poema traduzido)

A Frederico Nietzsche

Why in this life did you exhaust your spirit

In vain meditations, you melancholic man?

- You dissected the whole corpse of the land

And, at last, found no rest...and, at last, found no rest!...

Madness torn apart everything you had planed

And Germany trembled at your sound groans!...

What was the use, then, of your profound exams

Of men and slug and rock and oak and the stone and the mast?

For, to penetrate the mistery of the blackboards,

It was crucial to fathom the substance of things ignored

- You built out of illusions a whole different world,

Did not recognize God in the pane of the astrolabe

And when Science vainly proclaimed you a sage,

Your construction grew suddenly old!

- Augusto dos Anjos