Having read them all or not, 
we soon conclude everything’s a front 
covering up centuries of inexperience: 
the leaves outside don’t care 
about last year’s foliage, 
and the rocks in rain find it easy 
to forget the sun’s glower. 
Year after year our voyages 
deliver us to the same predicament: 
around us lies the land of the already 
explored, and yet our errors, veering off 
with the eye, outside, beyond the safe interior, 
remain unmapped and unremarked: 
that streak of quartz, those patient, weeping trees!