The Nihilist as Hero
“All our French poets can turn an inspired line;
who has written six passable in sequence?”
said Valéry. That was a happy day for Satan…
I want words meat-hooked from the living steer,
but a cold flame of tinfoil licks the metal log,
beautiful unchanging fire of childhood
betraying a monotony of vision…
Life by definition breeds on change,
each season we scrap new cars and wars and women.
But sometimes when I am ill or delicate,
the pinched flame of my match turns unchanging green,
a cornstalk in green tails and seeded tassel.…
A nihilist wants to live in the world as is,
and yet gaze the everlasting hills to rubble.
—Robert Lowell
—found in History (1973)