Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                           The Confusions of Being Human

                    To live life to the end is not a childish task

               -Pasternak, “Hamlet” (one of the Zhivago poems)

What do you do when you find yourself standing
Or maybe sitting, or kicked back with a cigarette
Among the smoking wreckage of institutions
The institutions that framed our actions and thoughts

Existentialism is inadequate
After all, we did not create ourselves
Each of us is an outward-looking I
A dependent center of reactions

But the unities upon which we depended
Have failed and collapsed upon themselves
Leaving us alone and stunned on an ashen plain
Alone and stunned and sorting out the pieces

And we can only sort them, not create them
For we are not God
                                               This is all a mystery