Bookshelves

In a musty library room

in a friend's old abode,

dark wooden shelves,

floor to ceiling, look like

rows of secrets, willing

to be opened like gates

and doors and windows

and minds. To reach

for one book, clothbound

with no dust jacket, and 

take it from its snug space,

fulfills a desire. For what?

You don't entirely know,

do you? But there it is,

the book, quiet and pliant

in your hands, centuries

of the printing art floating

invisibly behind it. The rest

of the books on all the shelves

and walls look on,

like spectators at a stadium--

but they're the quietest

audience ever. A clock's

bell dings, softly, softly. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Out of Our Way, Please

A small electric light behind me,

a merest proton echo of the sun--

and so my shadow leads me,

but I am in the way of where 

I ought to go, as I move down

a corridor at midnight, fretting. 

It's almost day now

and nearly when Earth spins

around to get out of its way,

and lets the Big Light bring

its rays to nourish everything

that grows and every mind that knows,

and every mind should want to know.

Oh, come now, all of us and everyone

with our tiny twisted prejudice, our petty

staggering away from proven ways to know,

our sad attachments to cold cadaverous

puppeteers: Let's at long last get

out of our own way. Let's not block

the light that lets us know that we

and every other human are essentially

the same on this our spinning planet. 

That we are "the people," and no other. 

hans ostrom

You Know?

We know we know
enough to know
we'll never know
enough to say
for sure we're sure
we know enough.


hans ostrom 2017

Epistemological Hash: Sheesh

A cat for instance is routinely perplexed--
not alarmed but calmly
situated in ignorance, seeking to understand.
--Whereas humans
have evolved, so to speak, into the expectation
that they have a right to know
and understand all
in a big goddamned hurry. Often they state

that expectation with believed nonsense,
hideous lore, and all manner of bullshit.
And anyway, what if science epitomizes Zeno's
Paradox, always advancing but never
finally knowing, so that human seeking

finds that the essence of the universe
is never quite what and not really there--
not a bad prospect, if you think rationalism
sans romance is, albeit necessary, a
bit of a bore. I see
I've made quite a hash of things here.


--hans ostrom 2015