Robert M. Simmons  

from Tracings (Poems 1964-1992)

                Conrad

What is truth?

Even honest people have difficulty with it.

Will two witnesses agree

upon the details of the same event?

Conrad was undisturbed

by such problems of reporting.

Truth to him

was more craft than science,

something born in the mind

to meet the needs of a particular moment

in space and time,

a creative act

without regard for philosophy or fact.

Seduction, evasion,

the gaining of advantage,

these were ends,

and facts might well be obstacles.

To Conrad

truth was not carved in granite,

cold, hard and rough,

something to be weighed and measured,

touched and tested,

confronted

regardless of consequences,

but rather

something fashioned deftly with the hand,

a castle made of sand,

a structure to beguile,

a place to hide

and meet oblivion with the rising tide.

                        © 2003 by Robert M. Simmons

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Subjects: poems about, truth, deception, character studies, poetry, poems

Conrad