Randall Jarrell

Is my voice the voice
of that skin of being-of what owns, is owned
in honor or dishonor, that is borne and bears-
or of that raw thing, the being inside it
that has neither a wife, a husband, nor a child
but goes at last as naked from this world
as it was born into it.-

I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

The climate of our culture is changing. Under these new rains, new suns, small things grow great, and what was great grows small; whole species disappear and are replaced