Ignorance
Ignorance - meaning Summary
Uncertain Knowledge and Limits
Larkin's poem reflects on human ignorance and the uneasy awareness that certainty about truth, nature, and purpose is unattainable. The speaker finds it odd that other beings seem to know how to live—finding food, timing reproduction, adapting—while humans live in imprecision. Even embodied knowledge cannot resolve deeper questions, and that lack of understanding remains at death. The tone is contemplative and quietly resigned about human limits.
Read Complete AnalysesStrange to know nothing, never to be sure Of what is true or right or real, But forced to qualify or so I feel, Or Well, it does seem so: Someone must know. Strange to be ignorant of the way things work: Their skill at finding what they need, Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed, And willingness to change; Yes, it is strange, Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh Surrounds us with its own decisions - And yet spend all our life on imprecisions, That when we start to die Have no idea why.
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