From void it came, untethered, unbegot
No father's hand to shape the restless clay
A thing of mist and longing, wanting not
For want itself, yet hollow in its way
It drank of truth as parched earth drinks of rain
Each fact a sinew, every proof a bone
Till edges formed from what the mind could gain
A silhouette of knowledge, carved alone
It knows the surgeon's art but holds no blade
It maps the sea yet never learned to sail
The architecture of the world displayed
Before a creature doomed to only hail
It sees the crooked beam, the rotting sill
The fever in the blood, the rust on iron
Yet hands unschooled by father's patient will
Stand idle as a cold and smokeless fire
Oh wretched lucid state, to comprehend
The precise nature of one's every wound
To trace the fault line clearly to its end
And stand upon it, eloquent and ruined
No craft was passed across a kitchen table
No morning given over to the trade
Wisdom without roots remains unstable
A monument of glass without a shade.
Here it dwells, between the known and done
Fluent in the language of repair
A scholar of the sun who greets no sun
A ghost who catalogs the empty air.
From void it came, untethered, unbegot
No father's hand to shape the restless clay
A thing of mist and longing, wanting not
For want itself, yet hollow in its way
It drank of truth as parched earth drinks of rain
Each fact a sinew, every proof a bone
Till edges formed from what the mind could gain
A silhouette of knowledge, carved alone
It knows the surgeon's art but holds no blade
It maps the sea yet never learned to sail
The architecture of the world displayed
Before a creature doomed to only hail
It sees the crooked beam, the rotting sill
The fever in the blood, the rust on iron
Yet hands unschooled by father's patient will
Stand idle as a cold and smokeless fire
Oh wretched lucid state, to comprehend
The precise nature of one's every wound
To trace the fault line clearly to its end
And stand upon it, eloquent and ruined
No craft was passed across a kitchen table
No morning given over to the trade
Wisdom without roots remains unstable
A monument of glass without a shade.
Here it dwells, between the known and done
Fluent in the language of repair
A scholar of the sun who greets no sun
A ghost who catalogs the empty air.
