Life Encompassed
How often I have said,
“This will never do,”
Of ways of feeling that now
I trust in, and pursue!
Do traverses tramped in the past,
My own, criss-crossed as I forge
Across from another quarter
Speak of a life encompassed?
Well, life is not research.
No one asks you to map the terrain,
Only to get across it
In new ways, time and again.
How many such, even now,
I dismiss out of hand
As not to my purpose, not
Unknown, just unexamined.
Donald Davie from Collected Poems
Mark Jarman, in Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry, comments: This poem reminds me of the limitations of critical understanding and opinion, and also of the importance and necessity of growth in the life of the mind.
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