The Library of Doubts

"We're making a balloon party conversation monster"-Sukha

According to David Damrosch,
The first organized collection
(That is, I should add, that we've found)
Of texts ever made in the world

Was built by the Sumerians
Almost five thousand years ago.
"Knowledge is supposed to be power,"
Writes Damrosch, reviewing letters

Among the greatest library
Of Mesopotamian build,
Ashurbanipal's Nineveh,
Bureaucratic monstrosity,

Two thousand years making, "yet it
May only breed uncertainty."
I found William Carlos Williams
On a shelf in a Carnegie

Library built for certainties,
Only to read him celebrate,
In free verse, library burnings.
That bred uncertainty in me,

Growing in me for decades now,
For longer than most kings have reigned
Over their kingdoms, that maybe,
Just maybe, participating

In reading and writing, tablets,
Scrolls, books, screens, and now, cyberspace,
Is itself marriage to madness,
Participation in something

Better burned than excavated,
Better cracked than put together.
Too many quotations piled up
And composting other fragments.

Perhaps, notes Damrosch, we owe much
Of our knowledge to Nineveh,
Despotic Ashurbanipal
And his paranoid ancestors,

"But it is worth reflecting that
We are also indebted to
Nineveh's sudden destruction."
Quick, but it was it complete enough?

Meanwhile my daughter can recite
And recognize her alphabet,
And her figurative language
Grows like the Garden of Eden.