Epistemology
Blaise
Pascal
“The heart,” says Pascal, “has its reasons, which
the reason knows not of.” I’m sitting now
at my old wooden desk and like this desk,
I sport the wear and tear that makes a man
unlike a boy. It’s after 5 a.m.,
I’ve been here through the night. We all of us
live life on earth. We turn our mind to things
and things betray us. In the world at large,
our wishes count for little and our thoughts
map poorly onto what exists. We stand
astride the water’s surface and the lake
beneath our feet escapes us, that is our
epistemology. And as our mind
proceeds to action, our unwilling heart
has stacked the deck. For it is of a mind
to want quite other things. It is so hard
to read a book, to throw a ball! The heart
steps in and what we do is not perhaps
so simple as we thought. We say hello,
we smile. Beneath our feet, the water’s surface
is tense and liquid. How do we expect
to plumb that depth? I rest my hands upon
this desk I know so well. The sun is up.
John Isbell
If you have any thoughts about this poem,
John
Isbell would like to hear them
