The Beginning of Wisdom (Proverbs 9.-10)

by Denise Levertov

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.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on September 11, 2011