Читать книгу This Place of Prose and Poetry - Lucian Krukowski - Страница 20

To tell the truth, I have no idea

how it feels to tell the truth—

or to rejoicing over telling it.

Truth, as I suspect, is a shell game

that we use for quelling doubts

that you or I can tell the world

something, anything, about how it was—

that might help our knowing how it is.

We tell the truth through “ings”

like know-ing, verify-ing, annotat-ing, correlat-ing.

These hide the world’s indifference

to the truths we do not tell, and (sadly)

to our best reasons for not telling them.

The world has it’s truths and we have ours.

Some think they’re both the same.

But truths that occurs within the mind

some others think are also inside the brain—

which we now all know is in the world.

The mind we have is in the world as well—

but you wouldn’t know it.

Because, for instance, you can’t see it

in the way you can see dissected brains

when probed for secrets they once had—

before they became dead.

Minds engage the world by hoping it will tell us

what we need to know about the way things are.

Tigers also need to know, as do rats,

salamanders, gnats, and kangaroos.

Brain is all they need—but there are dogs

who use our minds to know—I had a few.

How far do you think the quick will go —

with all its brains—when we are gone

or do not have a mind to know?