Provincial

True, I was not fitted for

The counting-room, the trading floor

I never learned to change a tire

Stitch a hem, or build a fire

I never traveled far abroad

Neglected China, and Cape Cod

Preferred the bookstore to Bombay

Found in Livy my Pompeii

I never mastered French or Hindi

But kept my Lonely Planet handy

Read Proust and Dante in translation

Learned in English of all nations

“Small Latin, and less Greek”

Jonson did of Shakespeare speak

Then what of me, who neither knows?

A fate, old Ben, I never chose

No Harvard, Oxford or Sorbonne

No London, Paris, Berlin, or Rome

No Nobel Laureaute was my tutor

I learned of genius by computer

I take my knowledge second-hand

The summed-up wisdom of all lands

And though it takes me years, or ages

I find at last the greatest sages

I sit in place, and streaming to me

Comes all truth, all joy, all beauty

I discover, at my feet

All things needful, world complete

And though my life in circles goes

The center, still, my soul will know

Not born to greatness, or to riches

My heart’s content, wherever it pitches.

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