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TO KNOW

Then along came seven men
with the tables of the law,
logarithms, aesthetics,
anatomy, grammar
logic and astronomy,
and from the entrails of their knowledge,
amber and sulphur
rose up in steam
and on their teeth -
white and black -
the child learned to play
the organ.

The song of the leaves was far away,
the wing silent,
the scent of the butterflies lost
under a coating of the soot
of forgetfulness.

But the great chamberlain of the secrets that surprise
and the fabricant who distils
the perfume of mummies
and the well-digger plumbing
the depths
of the chemistries lit
a huge candle.
It was wintertime and the bells rang out
over the desert of buried
caravans. Speak!
said the chief tormentor
of sleepless nights.

And the child recited a fairy tale:
I am
You are
He is
We are
You are
They are
and the moral is
To be.

Listen to the knowledge that crackles and reduces
everything to soot.
We have written on the blackboard with charcoal
and the wick has devoured the flame.
All the insects died in the caves of the labyrinth,
clowns with a brain but no skull are dead,
the stage hands have run off with the scenery.
In the silence of the night a concert lit up
and the palm trees of the future waited, unmoving,
when a soft wind with transparent fingers
pushed apart the wide
pampas of expectancy -
it closed eyelids and ears,
mixed into sleep
the pollen of bees,
honey into dreams,
opened the door of the labyrinth,
tied the thread of unhappiness
to the longing
to be
and not to be
and there in the dawn and the dew
the naked foot of the one of whom
we dream -
child lost, child found,
and there is the sum of things,
the language of causes,
everything lost, everything found,
hands of the night, fingers of light.
She isn't death and she isn't
your mother.
Her name is in all the whisperings,
in all the darknesses,
in all the laughter, all the tears,
Ariane, O my soul,
Ariane.

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