He Pleaded Ignorance

By KOLBUS MOOLMAN

He did not know what the sky was made of.

He did not know what fire tasted like.

He did not know how far away from the earth the truth was.

He did not know how long a man could survive without any covering over his
body. Such as skin.

He did not know the current market value of love.

He did not know the lengths a man would go to in order to find deception.

He did not know where it all came from.

Then he came up out of the water.

Then he found that he could still breathe. Even though it was air.

 

 

Kobus Moolman is an award-winning South African poet and playwright. He teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Click here to purchase Issue 04

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

He Pleaded Ignorance

Related Posts

They Could Have

CONSTANTINE CONTOGENIS
I’m just trying, wretch that I am, to put my life together. / Now, had the ruling gods bothered, they could have / made a fourth, who was good. / I’d have followed him, with pleasure. 

March 2026 Poetry Feature: Welcome Back Peter Filkins

PETER FILKINS
pissarro is dead cézanne too / swept away like willowed flotsam / that brute degas gone as well / chafing tides the sea of years // long ago battles fought discarded / ballast tossed from fame’s balloon / rising like heat and the unheard prices / feeding straw to the fires of need // for more garden cuttings variants

Two Poems by Heather Bourbeau

This forest is named for the first head of the National Forest Service, who warned of assuming natural resources were inexhaustible, who said without conservation we pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure, who asked if these resources were for the benefit of us all or for the use and profit of a few? He was also a leading eugenicist.