Vereinsamt by Nietzsche. My source translates the title as "Lonely" but it might be better understood as "isolated."
The crows caw
and go with zipping wings to the city:
soon it will be snowing.
Happy is he who now yet has a homeland!
Now you stand numbly,
gazing backward, ah! for how long already?
Why, you fool,
did you flee into the world as Winter approached?
The world - a door
to a thousand wastelands silent and cold!
He who has lost
what you have lost, never stops anywhere.
Now you stand pallid,
cursed to wander in the winter,
like smoke
that is always seeking colder skies.
Fly, bird, rasp out
your song in the melody of a bird of the wastes!
Hide, you fool,
your bleeding heart in ice and sneers!
The crows caw
and go with zipping wings to the city:
soon it will be snowing.
Woe is he who has no homeland!
------
some thoughts for interpretation:
- The "homeland" (Heimat in the German) refers to cultural practices, like religion, family, and the like. People with a "homeland" live normal lives, more or less content with their identity and place in the world.
- Fleeing "into the world" can be coupled with the crows flying to the city. Possibly this refers to the movement of people from their traditional rural "homelands" to the modern, cosmopolitan cities.
- People become "numb" as change brings hardship (the coming of winter) and compels them to leave their homelands.
- The move is foolish, however, since fleeing into the world simply brings the traveler/refugee to "a thousand wastelands." People in "the world" have lost their "homelands" and have no deep connection to anything -- they are atomized.
- "Cursed to wander the winter": with each successive generation, memory of the "homeland" become more distant. The path for the one without a homeland is progressively dreary.
- By this point I'm convinced the crows and birds are stand-ins for people. The bird of the wastes has taken up a new, rootless identity, one that contradicts its bleeding heart that cannot survive without its homeland.
- The final stanza is just an inversion of the first. The homeland is lost and the winter isolation has set in.
The crows caw
and go with zipping wings to the city:
soon it will be snowing.
Happy is he who now yet has a homeland!
Now you stand numbly,
gazing backward, ah! for how long already?
Why, you fool,
did you flee into the world as Winter approached?
The world - a door
to a thousand wastelands silent and cold!
He who has lost
what you have lost, never stops anywhere.
Now you stand pallid,
cursed to wander in the winter,
like smoke
that is always seeking colder skies.
Fly, bird, rasp out
your song in the melody of a bird of the wastes!
Hide, you fool,
your bleeding heart in ice and sneers!
The crows caw
and go with zipping wings to the city:
soon it will be snowing.
Woe is he who has no homeland!
------
some thoughts for interpretation:
- The "homeland" (Heimat in the German) refers to cultural practices, like religion, family, and the like. People with a "homeland" live normal lives, more or less content with their identity and place in the world.
- Fleeing "into the world" can be coupled with the crows flying to the city. Possibly this refers to the movement of people from their traditional rural "homelands" to the modern, cosmopolitan cities.
- People become "numb" as change brings hardship (the coming of winter) and compels them to leave their homelands.
- The move is foolish, however, since fleeing into the world simply brings the traveler/refugee to "a thousand wastelands." People in "the world" have lost their "homelands" and have no deep connection to anything -- they are atomized.
- "Cursed to wander the winter": with each successive generation, memory of the "homeland" become more distant. The path for the one without a homeland is progressively dreary.
- By this point I'm convinced the crows and birds are stand-ins for people. The bird of the wastes has taken up a new, rootless identity, one that contradicts its bleeding heart that cannot survive without its homeland.
- The final stanza is just an inversion of the first. The homeland is lost and the winter isolation has set in.