Truth

She has become adept at reading
in between the lines, at analysing
gaps and pauses. She understands
the elements in him that will
combine explosively, she knows
that history changes, dates
and meanings re-appraised,
eye-witnesses are blind,
the source material long gone.

She knows that boundaries blur
and shift, small wars declared,
and independence movements claimed.

All the stories that he tells
cast him as the hero – what does that
make her? The wicked witch?
Tempting with gingerbread?
The big bad wolf,all teeth
and slantways glances – or,
much worse, the second bride
of Bluebeard, destiny to find
the bloody chamber, and then
never leave? The bad girl
spewing vipers as she speaks?

Still, one and one make two,
Pythagoras holds true. He’s
made a physics that describes
a simple world, of billiard balls
and marbles. Under that, there
is a truth. She keeps on digging.

 

 “Nearly everything we are taught is false except how to read”

~  Jim Harrison from Songs of Unreason

For Day 11 of Jilly’s totally Unreasonable month. 

 

 

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