The Beginning of Wisdom

(Another Universe by Ursula Müller - found here)

You have brought me so far.

I know so much. Names, verbs, images. My mind

overflows, a drawer that can't close.

Unscathed among the tortured. Ignorant parchment

uninscribed, light strokes only, where a scribe

tried out a pen.

I am so small, a speck of dust

moving across the huge world. The world

a speck of dust in the universe.

Are you holding

the universe? You hold

onto my smallness. How do you grasp it,

how does it not

slip away?

I know so little.

You have brought me so far.

~Denise Levertov