10 July 2012

Tell all the truth, but cook it first*

Today a poetic blog buddy wrote in a comment on one of my poems that he thinks "truth plays out best in the tales we tell each other....as opposed to raw truth..."  which made me want to chart my poems and commentaries on a scale of truth.   However,  I can't conceive the dimensions of such a chart and therefore, instead, place all my poems at one point: the point of "how the truth appears to me now in a moment after time."  I wrote a poem about this "moment after" in the lines of Shakespeare's sonnet #18:


Shall I compare my Truth to that of a summer day?
Mine is much more lovely and more temperate.
Rough truths shake us, the limbs of raw truth sway,
And summer's truth hath all too harsh a gait.
Sometimes too bright the truth of heaven shines,
And often is its too solid purpose dimmed;
And every truth with Truth sometimes rhymes
By chance, or Nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But Truth's eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of the greatest Light it caught
Nor shall life brag Truth is of a grey shade,
When in eternal lines to Time Truth is wrought.
     So long as humans can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives my Truth, and this Truth shines on thee.


*reference to Emily Dickinson's poem "Tell all the Truth but tell It Slant."

1 comment:

dOT cHAST said...

I have a lot to sy, but I want you to know first that I am trying to express my eelins not toencourage, discouragE R whatever, just to sY HOW YOUR WORK HITS ME A AT THE MOMENT. wE HAVE NEVER HAD CONVERSATIONS THIS DEEP BEFORE, OUR LOSS, SO HERE GOES.IAM DEPLY IMPRESSED BY THE DEPTH AND STRENGTH OF YOUR THOUGHTS AND THE WAY YOU SAY THEM. wITHOUT SEEMINGLY ANY EFFORT, YOU CAN GO FROM SIMPLY EVERYDAY TO HIGHLY INTELLIGENT AND WELL THOUGHT OUT WORD, POEMS, AND ESSAYS, GET IT OUT WHERE PEOPLE CAN HEAR YOU, BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH HEARING, lOVE, mOM AND CONGRATS ON IT ALL.