The Kingdom Of Unknowing

They walk with eyes wide,

yet nothing they see,

A world painted bright,

but blurred utterly.

Shadows and warnings drift close to their ear,

But ignorance whispers,

“No reason to fear.”

The book lies unopened,

its wisdom asleep,

While questions unasked grow roots that run deep.

They guard their beliefs with walls built of stone,

Afraid that the truth might unseat what they’ve known.

Candles of knowledge flicker and glow,

But still they insist the dark cannot show.

The sun may rise higher,

the stars may descend,

Yet blindness,

unshaken,

endures to the end.

They scoff at the sailor who charts by the sky,

“Why chase the horizon? Stand still and deny.”

They laugh at the farmer who studies the rain,

While crops in their own field wither in pain.

Ignorance wears a crown made of glass,

Fragile but heavy as centuries pass. it

rules not with wisdom,

but comfort instead,

It numbs restless minds,

it hushes the dread.

The voices of teachers ring hollow and thin,

For lessons can’t enter when pride walls them in.

The wise may keep shouting,

their warnings still sound,

But to ears sealed with folly,

no truth can be found.

Ignorance feasts at a banquet of lies,

Drinking from goblets that cover the skies. it

drowns out the voices of reason and care,

And leaves only echoes of emptiness there.

Yet silence can’t hide the cost of its reign,

For ignorance blossoms as sorrow and pain.

The bridges left broken,

the friendships undone,

The wars waged in darkness,

with nobody won.

Still

hope waits in patience,

it always does grow,

For even the blind can be taught how to know.

A spark in the stillness,

a crack in the shell,

Can shatter the prison where ignorance dwells.

But until that moment,

the kingdom will sleep,

Guarding its secrets,

shallow and deep.

For nothing’s more human,

more tragic,

more sure,

Than pure ignorance

endless, and pure.