Is this, today – tomorrow?
Or just another day of yesterday?
My coffee smells no different,
The cloud outside is not a different shade of gray
/
It hasn’t moved, it hasn’t changed
As if someone played hangman in the sky
And left the puzzle hanging, partly solved,
Giving me food for thought and an excuse to cry
/
I cannot feel I’m growing older
The numbing high of similarities again invades my veins,
Convincing me that I’ll exist like this forever
And I believe, and I don’t care – and it is all the same
/
Can I make this, today – into tomorrow?
And not another version of a thousand days I’ve known
If I endeavour to resolve the hangman’s puzzle
Will I escape his heavy cloud that wouldn’t let me grow?
I studied history, religion and philosophy. You have captured the very essence of existentialism in a few dozen words. What you have done is quite profound in my opinion and I am not easily impressed. May I add you to my blog roll? Sarte, Camus, Kierkergaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Marcel would give you an A+. I wonder if there is particular irony here that the poem came from the pen of a Russian?
You’re too kind, Carl, thank you. You can certainly add me to your blog roll.
I think I’ve always been ‘a bit of’ an existentialist: the atmosphere of St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky’s and my own home city, is conductive to developing this particular attitude to thinking and to life in general. It probably didn’t help that I preferred The Brothers Karamazov to Cinderella while growing up. Many of my early university papers cited the philosophers you mention here. It’s hardly surprising that a lot of my writing is still inspired by existentialist thought.
A simple Wow! says it all.
Your ‘Wow!’ is truly appreciated :)!