The Abyss

A Poem.

Oedipus and the Sphinx (1903) by François Emile Ehrmann

What was the Abyss before Nietszche

before Camus, before Sartre and before Beckett

Did it have a name? Where was it hiding?

Silently slumbering in the shadows of the human mind till

the philosophes opened up the vault

within the newly-lit spaces of Enlightenment thought