We've Understood Nothing

We've understood nothing,
virtually nothing,
the brightest things in our experience,
the stars,
are barely seen
and what has been thought?
what has been dreamed?:
a whisper
a scribble;
the book is unwritten,
the fires unrealized,
zeal is undaunting,
and love unexplored;
our techna
our logos:
are mere wind-chimes
overpowered by hurricanes of potentiality
as the possibilities to move
to make
and be moral
like:
love at first sight
a propensity to learn
and embarrassing acts of generosity
are confounded by notions of normalcy:
conformity to the majority;
at the center of this
school is so often
both prostitute and priest
exhorting and seducing us to accept
a kind of creative infancy,
an in-the-box
agreeable sense of inquiry,
a frighteningly narrow
definition of self-conscious intelligence;
yet aside from this pomp:
-these priggish mumblings of progress-
we've understood nothing,
virtually nothing.