I don’t know anything

In the perimeter and the exactitude

of inexact sciences, here I am, my fellows,

without knowing how to explicate those vocables

that are translated bit by bit to the sky

and which taste robust existences.

Nothing was it worth

to bash the ostrich in the head,

or make holes in the earth.

“There is nothing to know, everyone knows.”

“Don’t bother us with geometry.”

What’s sure is that an abstract incertitude

comes out of each chaos which returns

each time to being order,

and how curious, everything

commences with words,

new words that sit alone

at the table, without previous invitation,

detestable words we swallow

and which get into our armoires,

into our beds, into our loves,

until they are: until there begins

again the beginning by the word.

Pablo Neruda