What That We Do Not Know

There is a little country we have never heard of
where people have a history we are not aware of
with kings or czars or PMs we can not name
These unthought of places have unknown GDPs
and unspoken unemployment rates
they may have a level of literacy that would surprise us
there may be many orphaned children in the care of the elderly
We may read of the colors of their flag during the Olypics
and see their representative to the UN in a glancing news article
but the stories of the lives in the country we do not know
are buried in ignorance and remain pearls in dust before swine
we will never know the tradition of the harvest
nor how important a certain port is to pilgrims
the culture heroes extolled in poems are a null value
our lives will be forever unmarked
by the absence of what we did not know