Claritas

[dedalus]

No freedom, no truth,

but only reductions

along the shrinking path

and when people ask you

what you did or didn’t do,

you can smile and say

whatever you like,

with embellishments

with casual lies,

because people

pay such little attention

until those final

enigmatic

jerky moments

when their eyes show

shocked understanding

in the face of facts lain as bare on the floor

as glistening oysters.

When we move

from darkness into light

there is nothing, almost,

to worry about,

apart from the prod of memory

submerged for the moment

but never gone,

a trailing afterbirth

quietly ticking,

awaiting the moment

of dramatic revelation,

or, as so often occurs,

the anterooms of despair

and silent white corridors.

There is a blessing in untimely death,

which, while cutting off

warmth, familiarity, fellowship,

spares us the delayed agony,

the uncoiling sting of memory.

Let us drink, then, while we can,

availing of subtle superior wines,

the succulence of finely-cooked food,

and delight in clever, well-told stories;

let us be generous, open-hearted and gay

in our physical and mental prime,

unworried by the bothers of the day

and the swirling circles of gossip and bad feeling:

these are petty, impure, demeaning things

unworthy of even one’s passing attention.

And, above all, let us have children,

or at least one single beloved child,

one who will outlive us and cherish our name

and then have his or her own children, thereby

placing a diffident yet undeniable

tab on the uncertain future.

[dcmarti1]

anterooms of despair

and silent white corridors.

Chilling.

There is a blessing in untimely death,

Camus wrote, "It is essential to die unreconciled and not of your own free will." You are in great company.

placing a diffident yet undeniable

tab on the uncertain future.

Lovely. A reasonable & hopeful poem in all.

[tonyv]

There is a hopefulness in this. Hedonism in moderation?

 

Tony

[dedalus]

Hedonism on a handbrake?