Accepting the Diagnosis

Knowledge of a changed world spreads,
At first, like oil on water,
A glossy, stillish surface.

Later, either the oil burns
So that the new world turns hell,
Or waves whip up that break it

Into archipelagos
Of thick gleams within the spray,
Smaller and smaller islands.

Nothing unchanges change.
The latest dispensation
Is read into the record

Of the oceanic churn
However dispersed it grows,
However hotly it burns.

So it’s there. That knowledge is
There, but that it was of change,
Will itself be forgotten.