2010/06/21 Non-Being (Rev.) Poem by Margaret Alice

At six starting school overcome by the most
overpowering mystery of all: Where was I
before I had become, would there have only
been one long dark night of blackness where
my mind was if I had never been born?

Could the World have become without me
being aware of all-encompassing sensory
embrace? Troubled deeply by an image of
blackness that was me until I arrived in the
light, tried to figure it out

If the vacancy that would have been me were
never filled by light of my seeing eyes, if the
World never came into being for me, did it ever
exist – given that I would never have been
possible or remotely aware of it?

Would my life have been eternal unconscious
nothingness? How was it possible I escaped
the blackness whence I came, and did I not
come, would the World have been a non-event?
I was deeply troubled, all strange new things

The school compound, large fir trees standing
high, doves cooing morning greetings before
class, bright sunrays flooding the passage, a
wedding doll someone brought to school, the
most beautiful thing I had ever seen

If I’d never seen them then for me there would
not have been a World; where would I have
been before then, where and how? Easy to see
this perplexed state caused me headaches,
had to stop thinking in order to rest

Nightmare ideas of non-being and vagueness
without light – my consciousness just dimly
aware of blackness for eternity, fatiguing
and scary, knowing in the end my perceptions
were the only door to the world I’d ever have

and I was scared not knowing whence
I came and where I was headed…