These things I know

These things I know -

these things that have not yet made known to me how to refer to them -

these are the things I summon to this poem. 

 

These things I know –

they know me too.

We know each other.

We know through each other

intimately. 

Things known so deeply that memory alone does not attain:

the viscera, the nucleus store them,

but they store these things less than they

are these things. 

 

I cannot take them for granted, these things,

because they act, through me, with me, every moment. 

Even to perceive the use or disuse of these things

is for me to act through these things. 

 

These things I know -

how do I know them?

I read them I laugh them I smell them I eat them

I cry them I squeeze them I hide them

I find them...

 

Maybe these things I know are really one big thing,

and that is the thing about which the ceaseless cycle of learning

is also the act of living.