1. UPON THE HORNS

You lived through the longest night;
Somehow still standing,
Somehow determined
To serve your time with solemn, but wilful heart.
But by bitter twist of fate,
This path you committed to tread,
Has come to this fork.
And you find yourself met
With the dilemma that stands
At the heart of it all;
The great impasse that paralyses and perplexes
Both animus and bestia in man.
—The sober lucidity of desolation,
And the intoxicating haze of the élan vital,
Locked in trepid inertia.

Will you serve your sentence
In crushing solitude,
Or condemn another soul to the pits?
To roam the earth in blissful oblivion
Or despair among the wretched—our kin?

You saw the others,
—Brothers, sisters, mothers,—
Exhausted and spent,
How they collapsed to the sand
And submitted to the relentless heat of the sun.
For who but a fool would defy that ageless will?

Suffering is the toll of life,
And pleasure its grateful boon.
Absence of pain is welcome
Even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone.
Whereas absence of pleasure is no misfortune
Unless there is someone for whom
That absence is a deprivation.

Yet nature spurns such reflection,
For it is but a deluded bid
Of the Will to become what it can never be.

Will you serve your sentence
In crushing solitude,
Or condemn another soul to the pits?