Poetry | ‘Myself, Divided’ by Liam Agius

Our search for God takes on many forms! In this week’s post, the aspiring poet Liam Agius expresses his search in a poem titled, “Myself, Divided”. In a quasi-Augustinian style, the poem explores the relationship between the unity and the multiplicity of our “self”; in a way that always keeps the door open for the presence of God within all this. The poem is accompanied by an illustration created by the digital artist Ian Farrugia – an illustration that seeks to both mirror and augment the poem’s intricate message.

Myself, Divided

I was once one body whole,

One in mind and one in soul;

But this wholeness I had won

Was at once to come undone

By one sole bullet fired

Through my introspection’s gun.

And I felt the one burst forth

Into a raging sea of fractions,

Dead delusions and abstractions.

Then as I saw the waves divide

Through parts of me I had denied,

The flood of numbers took me under

And dragged my drained and worn-out ego

Dangerously close to zero:

A yawning, gaping zero at the centre of it all.

And through that yawning zero’s eye

I catch a glimpse of the boundless eternal:

The untold depths of void maternal

Which spits us out and swallows all.

And through its transient secretions,

Ever shifting like the seasons,

I catch wind of its faint message and perceive

That my essence is inessence:

Heavenly lessons in evanescence;

And my passions lie in ashes at the bottom of the sea.

And as I push with all my will

That vast emptiness to fill,

Tossed around by the wild oceans

Of my unrestrained emotions,

I reach the sudden understanding

That I am the sum of all my flaws,

All my outbursts without cause,

All my dreams and aspirations,

Repressed needs for validation,

And I open my lips wide and swallow all.

So as I gulp down that vast ocean

In one all-embracing motion,

We return where I’d begun

As the many turn to one.

By Liam Aġius.