wist: past and past participle of wit , meaning:

1 (archaic): have knowledge: I addressed a few words to the lady you wot of | [ with obj. ] : I wot that but too well.

2 (to wit) that is to say (used to make clearer or more specific something already said or referred to): the textbooks show an irritating parochialism, to wit an almost total exclusion of papers not in English.

ORIGIN: Old English witan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch weten and German wissen, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit veda ‘knowledge’ and Latin videre‘see.’

–from the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2010, Oxford University Press.

“Wist” is a word that is not used anymore, and maybe it never was.  It refers to having knowledge, in the past—of having had knowledge.  It perhaps implies that this past knowledge is now lost.  It refers to specific knowledge referred to, to wit the specifics you used to know.  But it might be gone now, past wit’s end.

Wist looks longingly at the past, trying to recreate, reconnect, recollect.  But it is firmly rooted in the present, and cannot ignore what is while looking at what was.  Such a stance is certainly all-encompassing, filling to the horizons what is and what was in a double vision that crowds out other viewpoints while inviting them to jump in and live there, if only they would.  Looking at the world this way is wistful, and wonderful, if sometimes bewildering.

To look at wist is to see past knowledge and wisdom again, in new ways you once knew, but seem oddly to echo in unfamiliar places.  It is as if you shouted “Hello” to the Grand Canyon on July 3, 1976, and then heard it answer “hello, hello, hello” to you in your New York City flat on September 10, 2001, and you did not know why it answered then, but found it strangely appropriate.  And oddly comforting.  Knowing that old verities may indeed still remain when so much of unreality seems real.

Wist is a modern-day orphan, born of ancient wisdom and ways of seeing that we no longer see today.  But it is a self-contained child that is satisfied to have been, to share insights if called upon, or to merely continue looking at dazzling unforgettable sunsets that are forgotten, and listening to echoing songs no longer within easy memory.

What is it wist would have us remember?  Do we remember what happened, or only the stories we tell ourselves over and over?  We think in story, and so we edit and shape and prune and omit and embellish and add, and in the end we remember exactly what we chose to remember, and if my memory is different than yours, which of us is right?  Neither and both.  And that is not a paradox or a contradiction, and wist knew this.  Once.  And wants to let you remember it again.