Knowing
By John Herlihy

I sometimes ask myself:
What do I know?
It’s a simple enough question,
It should be simple enough to show.
Why then does it seem like the cawing of a crow,
Who steals what he wants and hides what he knows?

We comfort ourselves in our knowing;
It forms the prelude to our growing.
When I ask myself what it is I think I know,
Shadows begin to flicker and doubts just seem to grow.
It’s like searching for birds in last year’s nests;
They have already moved on at no one else’s behest.

If you ask a bird what it knows,
It will not tell you that it knows or doesn’t know.
Instead it sings sweetly thru the everlasting day,
Taking pride in the singing, not in what it has to say,
Repeating again and again as in replay:
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,
Until you realize it doesn’t admit what it knows;
It doesn’t need you to know.

We fool ourselves into knowing, as in a game;
We lift the edges of knowing to see what lies beneath;
I think I see something, but it’s too dark and too deep.
Knowing lies somewhere between the petals of a flower;
She loves me; she loves me not;
We know it; we know it not.
Remember me; remember me not;
Forget me; forget me not.
How will it eventually end, knowing that you forgot,
Then finally remembering you know not.

One thing I seem to know;
I remember when I lay down to sleep.
I begin to understand as I drift away;
Our condition is not to know; it’s here to stay.
I go to sleep not knowing.
When I get up in the morning,
I know I still know nothing.
It’s the morning that seems to know something;
Perhaps that is all I need to know.