519: Knowledge
"Knowledge"
Stephen Dunn
Some things like stones yield
only their opacity,
remain inscrutably themselves.
To the trained eye they offer their age,
some small planetary news.
Which suggests the world
becomes more mysterious, not less,
the more we know.
God knows is how we begin a sentence
when we refuse to acknowledge what we know.
Gravitas is what Newton must have felt
when gravity became clear to him.
Presto, said the clown as he pulled
a quarter from behind my ear
when I was five. The very same ear in fact
that pressed itself to a snail's vacant house
and found an ocean.
The problem is how to look intelligent
with our mouths agape,
how to be delighted, not stupefied
when the caterpillar shrugs
and becomes a butterfly.
It's on a clear surface we can best see
the signs point many ways.
God knows nothing we don't know.
We gave him every word he ever said.
Stephen Dunn
Some things like stones yield
only their opacity,
remain inscrutably themselves.
To the trained eye they offer their age,
some small planetary news.
Which suggests the world
becomes more mysterious, not less,
the more we know.
God knows is how we begin a sentence
when we refuse to acknowledge what we know.
Gravitas is what Newton must have felt
when gravity became clear to him.
Presto, said the clown as he pulled
a quarter from behind my ear
when I was five. The very same ear in fact
that pressed itself to a snail's vacant house
and found an ocean.
The problem is how to look intelligent
with our mouths agape,
how to be delighted, not stupefied
when the caterpillar shrugs
and becomes a butterfly.
It's on a clear surface we can best see
the signs point many ways.
God knows nothing we don't know.
We gave him every word he ever said.