Lullabye for Wittgenstein

What can be said, we speak out loud and clear,
Filling the schools and streets with human sound;
About the rest we must be silent, dear.

Our impulse? Just the usual -- a fear
The Cloud of Unknowing cannot be bound.
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear,

To blow by repetition, often and sincere,
The fog away, restating what we've found.
About the rest, we must be silent, dear.

The words are awkward, rumbling, light, austere,
Or sometimes sudden, waiting for the profound:
What can be said, we speak out loud and clear.

Yet sometimes words are echoes to the ear,
A tapping cane with which we map the ground
About the rest. We must be silent, dear,

Before the bank of future knowledge -- here,
Where dragons bark and ignorance surrounds
What can be said. We speak out loud and clear
About the rest. We must. Be silent, dear.

—October 2004, July 2005

A villanelle on first and last lines of the Tractatus. Some lines could use a little more work, methinks.

---L.