Chalk and bone. The slip of paper drawn from a dark pocket. The dust sinking slowly. Those four images stay.
He Who Knew Nothing of the World
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He who knew nothing of the world saw the sun as only sun, a touch as only touch, a wound as only wound.
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Chalk and bone. The slip of paper drawn from a dark pocket. The dust sinking slowly. Those four images stay.
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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.
Thoughts
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What could be lonelier than that death? The saddest part is: when a man dies alone, trying to connect with a false world while reflecting on authenticity as a higher truth... As James Hetfield said: "That old man here it's me..."
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He remembered neither worth nor meaning, but is the speaker saying that was peaceful or just empty? Those feel like different things.
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I recognized something here about grief that doesn't need explaining. The way you carry absence without it having to mean anything.
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this got me 💔
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Wait, does the narrator actually say all this out loud to the eulogy guy or is it all in his head? That detail keeps bothering me.
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Chalk and bone. The slip of paper drawn from a dark pocket. The dust sinking slowly. Those four images stay.
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That part about calling death death, where it says he looked upon it and named it exactly what it was. The whole poem hangs on that one thing.
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Does anything change for the narrator after telling the eulogy-giver all that? Or does he just live with what he said?
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Did anyone ever try to make him see the world differently, or did he stay simple and at peace his whole life?
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