Ruta Skendeliene Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

Nietzsche and a horse. A story that marked the philosopher’s final turn. A mythological fusion of the psyche and the legend. This poem transforms the historical Turin horse incident into a mythic initiation: Nietzsche collapses into compassion, fuses with the horse’s soul, crosses a metaphysical threshold, and becomes a tragic prophet whose mind dissolves into cosmic vision.

 

If Orion is read as the constellation of Christ, then the horse’s ascent toward Orion becomes a symbolic act of returning Nietzsche to God — not through belief, but through compassion. Nietzsche is spiritually reconnected to the divine through compassion

This is a mythic reversal of “God is dead.”

Nietzsche and the Horse of Orion

A chilly January morning broken in
Through the crack in steel clouds
Covering sleepy town
The sunray cozy strolled
The narrow streets of Turin
Caressing ancient pavement 
Stones engraved with the feet
Of marching Roman legions
And slaves being displayed 
Next to the marble cathedral
At the central marketplace
From the hills surrounding the city
A gust of wind descended
Scattering occasional snowflakes
Whimsically brushed the cheeks 
Of a man walking alone in the dawn
The man who spoke with fire
Last night, and had only ashes
Left in his palms
He had forgotten his scarf,
But not the abyss following him
As a loyal shadow opening wider
Each night, calling him 
To the original place, where 
The worlds are unmade
He was staring at the abyss last night
In his vivid, nightmarish dream
He was standing at the edge of it
Fire within whispered to him
Jumping is the only bridge
An intrusive thought was forming
Inside a desire to finally end 
Nagging torture
Then the cry came—a sound that split 
The morning like a sword through silk
A white horse stood still, its spirit 
Already slipping into the realm 
On the other side of the will 
The coachman’s whip rose and fell 
With the fury of a lesser god punishing 
The world for not fitting his will
White snow mixed with blood
Melted in a shallow pool of scarlet
Just like an animal being slaughtered
The horse did not have a voice
But his eyes lifted to the heavens 
Where the belt of Orion
Was twinkling last night
Begging for mercy, God
Who once resided in that spot
The prophet who declared
The death of God 
Humbly fell to his knees
Into the still warm pool 
That felt like an abyss
He tightly embraced the horse
Whispering gentle words 
Of compassion and love
Caressing his ears
Kissing his nostrils and cheeks
He held the horse as if he
Were the first living thing
Shaped from the clay
And he spoke the words 
That had never been spoken 
Since the creation day
When the world was innocent
And compassion was young 
Zarathustra gently touched 
Wide open animal eyes
With his warm fingertips
The horse took a deep breath 
Exhaled slowly and died 
A white mist rose above the horse
Swirled around in the air
Slowly moved back and forth
Touching the man’s cheek
The soul of the ancient beast
That had carried kings and priests
Entered man through his open lips
Time froze and stopped 
Still on his knees,
Zarathustra screamed:
“I am the bridge,
and I am the chasm.
I am the fire that devours itself.
Mother, forgive me.
I am a fool—
I have wrestled with monsters
Until they learned my name.”
And after that, no one is safe
He gasped for air,
Leaned forward,
Kissed the ground,
And beside the horse
He collapsed down
He crossed a threshold 
No one else could see.
The sky went dark.
The street sounds disappeared.
The man who had tried to bridge
Heaven and earth were taken away
To a square white cell
Where the world 
Encapsulated him and sealed,
For the defeated prophet,
The asylum was not a prison
But a temporary, liminal realm
From which he could not return
Fully to the human plane
And from which he could not escape
A secret door hid within the cell
That no one could see
But he could touch its iron hinges
With his cold, thin fingers
He knew one day it would swing
Wide open to the other world 
And he waited, patient as stone
A fallen titan struggled to find himself
His mind like a wild mustang
Wandered the ruins of the cosmos 
He once commanded, 
And rode on the mountaintops
But now he was reduced to 
A square smothering spot 
Where lonely souls are 
Abandoned and forgotten
Surrounded by brick walls
Deprived of love and touch
And reunited only in death
Day and night, he was chanting
Fragments of poems he recalled —
About monsters roaming
In the depth of the soul,
The abyss talking back to him,
Mirroring the lost soul
Of a self-blinded fool
Drowning in a black hole
To be discovered soon
By the greatest mind to come.
In the depth of the night
People could hear him singing
“Dionysus” and “The Crucified.”
He quietly died ten years later
As a man who had suffered greatly
When the hidden cell's door 
Opened that morning
A white horse galloped
Through asylum corridors
Through the Weimar streets
To wide open fields 
Through white puffy clouds
Towards the Orion constellation
Playfully jumping over
The three belt stars
Pointing at the grand 
Pyramids of Egypt
It was August 1900
Sultry summer in Weimar
As a prophet or a myth,
He was rediscovered 
Decades later
On my desk rests a picture
Of a man and a horse
To remind me that the abyss
Living in all of us
Waiting to be opened

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Ruta Skendeliene July 15, 2026 at 8:34 AM This poem transforms the historical Turin horse incident into a mythic initiation: Nietzsche collapses into compassion, fuses with the horse’s soul, crosses a metaphysical threshold, and becomes a tragic prophet whose mind dissolves into cosmic vision.