-- What We Know and Never Know --

John Herlihy

He knew there were some things he would never know;

There were so many things that he would come to know.

He thought he knew things that others didn’t know;

Others knew a multitude of things he would never know.

Much of what others knew he no longer needed to know;

Already, he knew how much he didn’t really know.

Above all, he knew how much he really needed to know;

He knew knowledge to be useless if not acted upon.

Knowledge, on its own, is but a stale bread image of itself;

Knowledge lived and internalized, now there is wisdom’s wealth.

Wisdom teaches us to question the truth of all knowledge;

If we don’t know, we need to ask, to seek the truth of things.

Knowledge speaks from the mind, wisdom from the soul;

Knowledge breaks down into facts, wisdom unites in truth.

Our friend, knowledge, is proud of all that it knows;

Our brother, wisdom, humbled by all that it never knows.

When he died, people never knew of him when he was alive;

Through his poetry, they came to know of him thru his poems.

Years, alas centuries later, others learned the wisdom he knew;

By then, of course, he was long since gone. . . and never knew.

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(c) John Herlihy 13 August 2020