'Who Gathers Knowledge, Gathers Pain' Poem by Anthony Weir

'Who Gathers Knowledge, Gathers Pain'



(Book of Ecclesiastes)

The twist, the torque in our brains
that caused language
caused badness and sadness and madness
unique among beasts.
Take away the words (and much of the pain goes)
We are almost only words (and have nothing else to say)
Too many words in the world (and not enough truth)
The busyness and the acquisitive words (remembering...dismembering)


What can I say about words
whose naked emperor is solitude?
No gods, no magic helpers (and words are only work)
Why do we prefer stories to insight?

Religion (just the mirror of arrogance)
Philosophy (fake analysis of arrogance)
Knowledge (mere myth)
(wisdom is silence)
Thought (only words endlessly permutating
spawning their busyness)
Because we invented reason we think we are rational.

Madness is the price of language.

Can we not reduce the words that pass for awareness
(that tell us we are swimming in our sinking) ?
Reduce them to very small poems (less smug than haiku)
Or just to breathings
Or just to looks?

Let there be no more words!
Let there be no more books!

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