55. The Spirit of Gravity
1.
MY MOUTHPIECE- is of the people: too coarsely and cordially do I talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger sounds my word to all ink-fish and pen-foxes.
My hand- is a fool's hand: woe to all tables and walls, and whatever has room for fool's sketching, fool's scrawling!
My foot- is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot over stick and stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all fast racing.
My stomach- is surely an eagle's stomach? For it preferrs lamb's flesh. Certainly it is a bird's stomach.
Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away- that is now my nature: why should there not be something of bird-nature therein!
And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is bird-nature:- verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally hostile! Oh, where has my hostility not flown and misflown!
Thereof could I sing a song- - and will sing it: though I be alone in an empty house, and must sing it to my own ears.
Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full house makes the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart wakeful:- those do I not resemble.-
