Unknowing:
I have shaken Agamemnon’s dust from my Mycenae shoes;
Breathed of Napoleon’s last breath;
Seen the light from stars long dead;
Drunk water that once fell as a snowflake
Upon the summit of Everest
Before it knew its name or the footsteps
Of Hilary and Tensing
(Or possibly even of George Mallory –
But that’s another story).
Unknowing:
I drew on the blackboard just this morning
With the chalk remains of the largest Ichthyosaur that ever lived;
Wrote on paper produced from the very tree
Your granddad climbed and fell out of when he was a lad;
Paddled, aged 3 ¾ , bucket and spade in hand
In precisely the same place where King Canute
Set up his throne to ‘rebuke the waters’;
Killed a spider in the shower
Whose direct-line Scottish progenitor
Inspired Robert Bruce with his resilience.
Unknowing:
I may have met an angel disguised as a tramp
Begging in the rain for the price of a coffee;
Walked past you in the street last Wednesday week;
Dug a hole to plant a shrub
And stopped a single, solitary spade-full short
Of a treasure trove to rival the crown jewels;
Switched off the light and gave up the midnight search
For melody and harmony
Just before ‘Yesterday’
Gave up on me and gifted itself to Mc Cartney.
Unknowing:
My favourite shirt was made by a 9 year old Indian girl
Sold into slave labour
And chained to her machine 17 hours a day;
I’ve eaten entrecôte from a cow called ‘Clementine’
By a farmer’s daughter
Who, as chance may have it,
Might just meet and marry your son in three years time.
Unknowing:
I taught a girl to teach,
Who, in her turn, will teach someone’s son
Something that alters the course of his existence
And of mine and yours and history;
I said something unintentionally
Which someone took the wrong way
And ate him up and into an early grave;
Built sandcastles with my daughters on the beach
From the grain remains
Of the very rock of ages past
Upon which life first hauled itself out of the sea.
Unknowing:
I am the 593rd person in all time
To call this plot of land ‘mine’;
I once thought of life, God, the Garden, Darwin and Dawkins
And actually got the answer right….
….But, of course, I don’t know which thought that was.
Unknowing:
I needed someone once….
…not knowing it was you.
