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On Certainty
We used to say that knowledge is of natural
classes
And primordial elements, though one thought of
fire,
Which moves, which grows when fed, whose red,
alert desire
Sleeps with continuous breath beneath the
morning ashes.
The child or primitive says it's living or
something higher.
Yet even of individuals there are certainties.
Of facts which privilege our way of knowing
there's no great list
Or argument stronger than the fact that we
exist,
Our recognitions not with effort but with ease.
What's true of one is true of every Socrates.
So let our notions bind us, let Derrida's not
bind him,
Lest in the emergency, we, too, be like the
child
Who crouched in the closet, hiding, by a bad
idea beguiled,
The reasonable notion that there the fire could
not find him.
Anthony Lombardy
©
1994; originally printed in Sparrow.
Reprinted by permission
of the author. |