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Bread and Wine, Part 7

Oh friend, we arrived too late. The divine energies
---Are still alive, but isolated above us, in the archetypal world.
They keep on going there, and, apparently, don't bother if
---Humans live or not... that is a heavenly mercy.
Sometimes a human's clay is not strong enough to take the water;
---Human beings can carry the divine only sometimes.
What is living now? Night dreams of them. But craziness
---Helps, so does sleep. Grief and Night toughens us,
Until people capable of sacrifice once more rock
---In the iron cradle, desire people, as the ancients, strong enough for water.
In thunderstorms it will arrive. I have the feeling often, meanwhile,
---It is better to sleep, since the Guest comes seldom;
We waste our life waiting, and I haven't the faintest idea
---How to act or talk... in the lean years who needs pots?
But poets as you say are like the holy disciple of the Wild One
---Who used to stroll over the fields through the whole divine night.

-Friedrich Hölderlin, 1803