A Labyrinth to Me

The following poem is one which I enjoy reading.  And recently I have stared at the road ahead of me and it seems to me to be a labyrinth.  I believe that I know where the maze should end, yet each day I find another turn.  The poet writes of futility and emptiness.  I myself would feel the same if only to the end I strive.  The hazy nature of the future should incite in me a passion for today. I have a task each day (Eph 2:10) laid out before me.  Joyfully must I face my now.  But I cannot stop my daily quest to elucidate a definite call.  Balanced must I be in living now and faced ahead.  When I stop and look back, I can see a focused track that has led me here.  Now I must trust the God who lives take my life, if willing I am, to use that which he has shaped.

The Labyrinth


Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperment for getting on.

The hundreth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.


"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in minature.

Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?

All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.

Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?

Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.

His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.

The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.

My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.

If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.

All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."


Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.


WH Auden