Dasein is a German word used for existence, literally meaning "being-there". It is most famously used by Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus Sein und Zeit as roughly synonymous with 'Human Being'. Here Dasein means the peculiar kind of being that a conscious entity has. For Heidegger the person is thrust into a world of meaning so 'dasein' fits as the being of persons who confront the world to understand and interpret it. In the following poem I use 'dasein' in this sense, and give it a moral and theological twist with the notion of sin. 'Sin' here may be taken as equivalent to 'original sin'.
Dasein, wherein lies thy being?
Has it fled itself and meaning?
What purpose can thy dark despair
Bring forth to comfort in thy lair?
What chasm, what loss there is herein
when thee, Dasein, affirm thy sin.
Can satisfaction of thy humanity
Break off the bounds of thy temporality?
What of the past can it forsake,
the present, or present past remake?
Can the future hold a golden dream,
when the past has dammed the stream?
What art thou if thou art not Dasein –
an empty casket drained of its wine.
Beware Dasein, thyself is empty still,
If thy past matters naught for thy future will.
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