Knowing Every Room Poem by gershon hepner

A house in which one knows each room
is not worth living in, a golden bowl.
Lives also must have gaps; assume
you understand the body, not the soul.
In each room should lie hidden treasures
you do not know about to match
the secrets of a life whose pleasures
serendipity can catch.

In Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl” the impoverished Prince Amerigo, showing his mistress Charlotte round his house, the Pallazzo Ugolini, tells her: “A house in which one knows each room is not worth living in.”

8/27/08