Nietzsche’s Hands

Celebrated, the moustache, And near enough ignored His “beautiful hands”. Capable on a keyboard, improvised A polonaise, his own artistic Compositions “dull and decent”. He could see, some, but much swam, out there: Knives and forks, print, street signs. Then, his mind made up, he laid about, Sank immense nets into the cultural acid. When we winched them back in, on fingertips, They rippled with rainbows—herring and sprat He could fling, raw, in the teeth Of the Bürgertum, God rot it. Ah, no God: So to invoke the impact of quanta on quanta And extirpate for keeps the German cabbage, His fingers, subject to whim, and rounded Like objects in a metephor, made good the feeble Peering eyes. Each tip housed a labyrinth, Circling in or out, from ivories an octopod Pressed the torrent of a tune. From Cretan pots Their gestures, snaking out, apprehended, Turn on turn, a tumbril in the stars. Those fingers must have held, no less, the comb To bush his hairy icon out, to primp. On long mountain walks they jotted Gothic Letters on a page, deleted angrily Brainwaves, on a page one trouser leg Segregated from his knee. What a joy, At long last, to know the knower not deceived But disobedient, at his word. Underneath The creams of language here’s a tongue can taste A universe, cyclopic, but propulsive, alien To a species blocked by self-torment, To shopping, authority—all the cockahoop Engines of flesh not fuelled by despair. When Nietzche, squinting, trimmed his fingernails, Did he care for suchlike slighter things? To a turning pot a potter’s fingers do not cling.