If the world is full of suffering
How may we live?
If life is nothing but failure
How may we live?
If purpose is unclear
How may we live?
Time immemorial may answer
The apparition of life worth living
The void may beckon your soul
The abyss my claim you
The wraith from whence you flee
An event horizon approaches
A point from whence there is no return
A time from whence there is no return
A horizon from whence light does not return
You shall shatter before you are whole
Upon the tempest you seek
Yet fail to see
A sacrifice you shall make
Upon your soul
The void shall claim you, defectum
In darkness
You may learn
Devoid of light
You shall see apparitions
Phantoms from whence you flee
Shades of pain will encircle you
You will be besieged on all fronts
Your mind will betray you in darkness
Yet your soul shall still guide you
Shattered by forces beyond you
Reduced to that which does not break
There you shall be reborn
Upon the throne of life
Darkness you shall escape
If the world is full of suffering
We shall live despite it
If life is nothing but failure
We shall learn from it
If purpose is unclear
We shall seek it
Tristan Barnard
BSc Wood & Wood Product Science,
STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY
Defectum or failure deals with the idea of accepting our own short comings as part of ourselves and deriving strength from the lessons we have learned to escape our self created purgatory thus the poem has nine between the first question and the answer at the end. This references the nine rings of hell and the path ahead to escape that Dante outlined in his work Inferno.
