He Who Knew Nothing of the World
He who knew nothing of the world
saw the sun as only sun,
a touch as only touch,
a wound as only wound.
Tick. Tock.
From that fluttering,
fathomless arithmetic of stars,
from Copernicus to Galileo,
from that bright-breathing sea of sparks
he died today.
I followed him to the grave.
The man who gave the eulogy
was chalk and bone,
a pale mouth searching
for the name of that forgotten thing
called humankind.
I told him
that to see the sun as only sun,
the touch as only touch,
the apple as only apple,
was no poverty of vision
but its purest form;
that this cold creature
had indeed been alive,
because he had looked upon death
and called it death.
That frail figure,
soon to be scattered
like a slip of paper
drawn from the dark of my pocket,
remembered neither worth nor meaning.
He whispered that they had never been.
Never.
And all the while,
softly spoiling,
slowly sinking,
into this dreamed-of,
dust-dim,
imagined earth,
lay the man
who knew nothing of the world.