What I Know (Making Free with Villon's Smalltalk)

What I Know (Making Free with Villon's Smalltalk)

Original Text
Phyllis Gotlieb, Red Blood, Black Ink, White Paper: new and selected poems, 1961-2001 (Toronto: Exile Editions, 2002): 112. PS 8513.O77R33 Robarts Library
1I know how to ring down a chime of dimes
2in a dime slot if you can find me a dime slot,
3I know how to push the button at a stoplight
4so the red flicks green before you blink, and
5I know how to do a cat's cradle behind my back;
6I know how to love a stem and a leaf
7so the flower reaches up to kiss me
8but other than that, I don't know anything
9and I am the greatest of puzzle solvers:
10give me two letters of a 14-letter word you got it,
11and words, I know every word spoken in jest
12and every lying word because every
13lie is as weak as a cobweb, because
14everyone who believes a lie is a liar
15to the own self, oh sure, I know all that
16but other than that I'm an ignoramus.
17I know where there is love deep as a river
18and I know how to swim in it, thank God,
19and also the bitterness of the seas it can decant into,
20but the thready fibrillations of its sources are mysteries
21to me, and though I know how to love a soul alive
22I'm damned if I know how to make a soul rejoice.
23I give up on it. I don't know anything.
26and I know how to end a line with a whipcrack,
27but other than that I don't know anything.

Notes

24] François Villon (1431-1465?), French poet and rascal. Back to Line
25] archy: the vers libre poet transformed into a cockroach, for which see archy and mehitabel (1927) by Don Marquis (1878-1937). Back to Line
Publication Start Year
2002
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2003
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright

Copyright The Works: Collected Poems of Phyllis Gotlieb Calliope Press 1978