Why oh why oh why oh why oh
Why do mathematicians go mad?As if in problem solving they dissolve
Themselves at the same time.
Why did Van Gogh shoot himself?
And his ear — what was that all about?
Was the balance of his mind
Deranged by syphilis, poisoned by lead?
Why do I wish to be like others
When I can never be like them,
Nor would I really want to be —
As talented as they are?
I’ll always be somewhere
On the borderland of happy-sad,
Always be somewhere
Safe in the boring middle like most of us.
Why am I forgetting more and more
And also remembering more and more,
And why does meeting strife
Make me turn on my heels and run these days?
And why am I disease, distraction,
Jealousy, anger, guilt, betrayal,
Elation and negation,
Perfection and putrefaction?
And why on earth should there be
On this table a vase, a bowl of fruit,
A book by Nietzsche,
A paper knife, a pen,
An Egyptian ankh, a crucible,
A bodhisattva, calm, inscrutable,
A dead fly in a glass, a wilting rose,
A poem so anarchic and so questioning?
(This could be a little-known poem by the little-known Austrian surrealist painter and poet Zelig Biberkopf, who died in an Innsbruck psychiatric hospital on 1st April 1976. Translated from the German by The Solitary Walker.)
