We live in a time of frantic innovation,
new names, techniques, machines.
Of stuff outside we grow in understanding,
new theorems, particles, genes.
Wisdom eludes us.
Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude,
Knowledge, Piety, and the Fear of the Lord.
A list of gifts, implanted in youth,
shrivelling unwatered in the flourishing growth
of worthless information.
I know I've met this gripe before
in thoughts of men so long dead
that their beautifully-written mud-scribed tongue
lives only, now, upon the thread
of a single scholar's life.
It seems to be the way we are made,
that our minds delight in stuff that's fleeting,
and we wake each day like so many birds,
singing our little hearts out, and keeping
a bright eye cocked for worms.
Even the quest for Wisdom is vain,
a magpie game for serious fools.
For Wisdom is not a creature to own,
or something to use, as one uses a tool.
Wisdom just is.
Why fight folly, always failing?
Why not join the gang, and plunge
across the cliff-top, laughing gaily,
floating freely, trading wisecracks,
holding hands 'til splashdown?
Well I'm networking on Facebook. Maybe I'll start my own loosely organized gang.
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