Ignorance
All my long life, I’ve
fretted at my ignorance.
Student summers when free,
I’d start over in the library,
sampling dictionaries,
encyclopedias
for first steps in knowledge -
universal, hopefully.
Before history, prehistory.
Before languages, Language.
Before art history, Art.
Daunting? you bet!
Then I learned: postpone
what’s Minor, find what’s Major.
Summer I now gave up to
Leonardo, Michelangelo,
Russell’s (slick) History
of Western Philosophy,
Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, Tchaikovsky.
Shakespeare and co
were set authors each term
and looked after so.
Summers called friends
to the beach, me
to the library.
What did I learn?
Ignorance is incurable.
Thenceforward, cut corners,
teacher of the little I knew,
remaining a smatterer
informed by the book review.
The books themselves
when I retired loomed
up again, threatening:
last chance, now or never.
I lined them up: Homer,
Plato, Sophocles, Dante,
Cervantes, Gibbon, Hugo,
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.
They’re staring at me now.
I stare back and shrug.
How long have I got?
Treat them with severe ignore?
After many a summer
dies the autodidact.
Some quick dipping,
skimming and skipping -
that’s about all they’ll get.
After me, anyone’s welcome
to shelve those classics
where I didn’t begin -
with a long strong
concentration span.
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