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[All the fruit...]

All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked,
and they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this:
That everything curls inwards, like snakes,
Prophetic, dreaming on
The hills of heaven. And many things
Have to stay on the shoulders like a load
of failure. However the roads
Are bad. For the chained elements,
Like horses, are going off to the side,
And the old
Laws of the earth. And a longing
For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however
Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential.
Forwards, however, or backwards, we will
Not look. Let us learn to live swaying
As in a boat rocking on the sea.

-Friedrich Hölderlin, 1803