The things I know are jumbled and tangled into an indescribable heap
inside me.
The things I Don’t Know are separated and ranged of their own
volition in long orderly rows in my conscious mentality.
The things I know glow with tints and gleams and will-o’-wisp lights
and primal colors and waveringly with the blinding gold-purple
lightnings of all-Time.
The things I Don’t Know glow--each one separately--with a small
precise lantern-brightness of its own.
Also in my wide background are things I don’t know and am unaware
of it: the mass of my luminous Ignorance--it shines with an earthy
phosphorescence.
When I look at the things I know I get an undetailed perspective of
me like a bird’s-eye view of London.
When I look at neat formal rows of things I Don’t Know I have a clear
look, as if through an uncurtained window into a bare little room, at
my quietest self sitting knitting or plaiting straw.
I reckon up and count up and check up lists of big and little things
I Don’t Know--like this, rapidly:
I Don’t Know what ink is made of, nor how to fire a Maxim gun:
I don’t know how to make a will: I don’t know how to cook a
prairie-chicken, nor what to feed a pet weasel, nor who invented the
snarling-iron, nor what it is.
I Don’t Know what food people eat in the Himalaya Mountains, nor how
Lord Cornwallis felt when he surrendered: I don’t know the color of
a chicken’s gizzard, nor of sand, nor of fish-scales, nor of mice: I
don’t know whether an English cabinet minister needs strength of mind
or strength of will, or both, or neither.
I Don’t Know how I hurt the true heart of my friend: I don’t know
astronomy nor solid geometry: I don’t know what I think with: I
don’t know what ooze leather is, nor who pitched for the Tigers in
nineteen-nine.
I Don’t Know a good horse from a bad horse: I don’t know why a bat
sleeps head downward, nor what wasps live on: I don’t know how to
open oysters, nor how to milk a cow: I don’t know the Latin for
‘whiskey.’
I Don’t Know whether friendship is a selfish or an unselfish thing,
nor who discovered the medlar apple: I don’t know what is a jab,
fistically speaking, nor a punch, nor a hook, nor a wallop, nor the
fighting weight of Packey McFarland: I don’t know whether a moth
‘marries’ or whether her eggs are impregnated like a fish’s: I don’t
know why a clasp knife is called a jack knife, nor what to do for an
aching foot.
I Don’t Know how glass is blown: I don’t know whether coal is
vegetable or mineral: I don’t know the chemical composition of the
sunset vapors, nor how to play euchre: I don’t know how many guns an
armored cruiser carries, nor whether a gorilla meditates: I don’t
know whether I hate or greatly admire Catherine and Marie de Medici:
I don’t know a winch from a windlass.
I Don’t Know where is the cinnamon bear’s native haunt: I don’t know
how flint is mined, nor if wire is made of steel: I don’t know who
was the better man--William Wordsworth or the Duke of Wellington: I
don’t know the advantages of tariff revision downward: I don’t know
where ex-President Taft will go when he dies.
I Don’t Know whether I feel more comfortable with or without my
stays: I don’t know the origin of the word ‘dogged’: I don’t know
whether a ‘full house’ is better than ‘two pairs,’ nor whether a
right merry heart to-day is better than a wrong contented mind
to-morrow: I don’t know whether rabbit-pie is made of cats in Paris,
nor how many sails has a sloop: I don’t know what makes a dead body
rot.
I Don’t Know how to sharpen a carving knife, nor how to roll a
cigarette: I don’t know the real English meaning of the French noun
‘élancement’: I don’t know whether my sex is a matter of my genital
organs or of my mental inwards: I don’t know how to determine the
contents of a circle in square inches, nor how to pronounce ‘zebra.’
I Don’t Know whether Edgar Allan Poe is big or little: I don’t know
how many soldiers fell at Shiloh: I don’t know whether temperament
or nature or circumstance makes one woman a happy kindhearted whore
and another an unhappy cruel-hearted nun: I don’t know how to grow
artichokes: I don’t know what brimstone is, nor how to play the
accordion: I don’t know what quality in me forms my handwriting.
I Don’t Know what-like was my Soul in the Stone Age: I don’t know
whether cheese is good or bad for my health: I don’t know what
becomes of discarded hairpins, nor a tooth-brush’s ultimate destiny:
I don’t know the ‘Fra Diavolo’ opera, nor whether anyone ever uses
the word ‘thwack.’
I Don’t Know whether my heart breaks from within or without: I don’t
know whether ‘good old Marie Lloyd’ of the London ‘halls’ has a brain
like G. K. Chesterton or a dexterous individuality like a juggler:
I don’t know whether I feel spiritual bliss in my knees or in my
spirit: I don’t know why I breathe and go on breathing.
I Don’t Know what became of the ten lost tribes of Israel: I don’t
know how to say how-do-you-do to a king: I don’t know the exact
meaning of my terror and despair: I don’t know why I love--why I ever
love--
I Don’t Know whether laws of chance govern a spinning roulette
wheel and ivory ball or whether chance is beyond law: I don’t
know what kind of missile a Krupp gun shoots: I don’t know how a
ground-and-lofty tumbler turns a triple air-summersault: I don’t
know whether I really am the way I look in the mirror: I don’t know
whether the Russian language has Romanic roots: I don’t know what is
the wild power in poetry.
I Don’t Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness:
I don’t know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away
my Body: I don’t know that I wouldn’t deny my Christ, if I had one,
three times before a given cockcrow: I don’t know on the other hand
that I would: I don’t know whether honor is a reality in human beings
or a pose: I don’t know that I mayn’t be able to think with my Body
when it is in its coffin.
I Don’t Know what makes each day a Day of dark Gold and life
mournfully precious: I don’t know where is God: I don’t know how they
make tea in Ireland: I don’t know how to pronounce the word ‘girl’:
I don’t know how to make lace: I don’t know whether I hear a sound
or feel it, nor why a spool of thread looks exactly like a Spool of
Thread.
I Don’t Know--I Don’t Know--I Don’t Know, rapidly, to the end of the
mystic common-place infinitudes.
--those give me a clear look, as if through an uncurtained window
into a bare little room, at my quietest self sitting knitting or
plaiting straw--
_A life-long lonely word_