Not to Know How to Live

    All modesty is false modesty
when it comes to poems,
    or to the silence
in which poems begin
    before they are words,
when they are still daisies
    at the foot of the dead Christ
in an anonymous painting,
    13th century. Not to know how to live
is one thing, and nothing
    to be ashamed of.
But not to know
    how to sit in front of those daisies
with tears in my eyes:
    what a waste that would be.