My Grasp upon the World is a
Strangle-Hold about my own Neck²
Puny Griefs in your Transitory shapes –
Ye are henceforth Dwarfed by the Dread
Extremes of what I’m starting to Become³
For each Ecstatic instant, we must an Anguish
Pay – in Keen and Quivering Ratio to the ecstasy⁴
The Meaning of Life comes only as one struggles
To wring meaning out of Meaningless Suffering⁵
There’s No Escape, but into what is Still Worse⁶
All Happiness is Provisional: the Looming
Presences: Great Suffering and great Fear
Withdraw only into our peripheral vision⁷
And, in the Lowest Deep: a Lower Deep
Threatens to Devour me – Opens Wide⁸
I’ve acquired a dimension of Suffering
Which Poisons and Devours my whole
Being, as far as I can See – For Ever⁹
There is only One thing that I Dread:
Not to be Worthy of my Sufferings¹⁰
¹ Gerard Manley Hopkins, No Worst, There is None
² Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
³ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Drama of Exile
⁴ Emily Dickinson, For Each Ecstatic Instant
⁵ Richard Wright, Black Boy
⁶ Hermann Hesse tr. Hilda Rosner, The Journey to the East
⁷ Denise Levertov, Of Being
⁸ John Milton, Paradise Lost
⁹ Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
¹⁰ Fyodor Dostoevsky, quoted by Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning