Limited Understanding

The chimp makes dominance displays in storms -
the caveman draws his quarry on the wall -
the shaman dresses in its skins and horns -
the herdsman’s vision gives law, ritual...
Our knowledge limited, our searching grand,
we guess a spiritual base of things
that live beyond the things we understand.
Kekulé dreams the benzene dance of rings.

Each mundane shown cause of reality
generates fresh hopes, fears and superstitions.
The more we grasp the world’s machinery
the more we startle at the apparitions,
the background patterns that we swear we see,
eternally elusive intuitions.

Robin Helweg-Larsen


If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Robin Helweg-Larsen   would be pleased to hear them.