– to know why –
Listen to audio
Wanting
– to know why –
Would it matter,
Wanting
To know why,
If one didn’t
Get an answer,
Having thought
To wonder,
Ought question
Mental wrought,
Find whether
Trouble ought,
Tho no longer
Above water,
While persists
Probe forever,
One considers
Being clever,
Mightn’t ever
Learn reply,
Wanting
To know why,
Best be left
Without an answer!
Imagery - Wikimedia Commons
Music - excerpt of Debussy, Chopin, Satie (Piano Music)
Audio - Jean-Jacques Fournier
© Jean-Jacques Fournier
written in Sweetsburg
April 17, 2022
Poetry on a Canapé 
Not getting an answer can be a mixed blessing, but either way it wreaks havoc on the mind – stirring up endless thoughts of why why why. Great poem.
Ah! My faithful friend, reader and critic, of my persistent scribbles. Make the writing of these thoughts worthy of being given life, which can only happen when given attention by other than the scribbler a.k.a. author.
“Mightn’t ever
Learn reply,
Wanting
To know why…”
Oh, Jean-Jacques, humanity is very curious. It is a gift that sometimes gets us into places where angels fear to tread. We seek to define the meaning of our lives, because when we understand the why, we can respond. This is especially important in times of change and transition. But there are times, we will never have the “why” so the question then becomes. Why do we need to know? I love Heraclitus’s take on this: “Everything flows, and nothing abides, everything gives way, and nothing stays fixed.” Perhaps the why is embedded within the change.
And alas despite man’s inbred need to know we continue to push, consistently
bordering on the destruction of our planet.
That may be true, Jean-Jacques, but there are many who act with courage and hope. I believe that your poetry inspires us to hope, to have courage to accept the challenges that we will encounter.
The poem ends with “best be left, without an answer! Thus so, the self-influenced discovery of one’s own conceived answers as to a raison d’être…