Looking deludes you, and those emotions, too.
Women’s magazines present faces
In a way that acknowledges those faces
Free of blemishes are vital images,
So that, for society, the illusionary is true.
A pretty face is like a flower, which is
Banal, not interesting, and hardly new.
Poetry uses metaphor—one object is placed beside another:
Do you want them doing that to you?
Hamlet has to be described exactly,
Or he won’t be emotionally true;
He won’t be able to speak in the word-sea
To the sea of the audience. That cannot be.
But there is one thing that doesn’t delude you—
Except for echo bouncing off sky and ground—
And what I’m talking about, of course, is sound.
Sometimes you don’t know where it’s coming from,
But it’s the most actual thing, when found.
There’s many illusionary empires: empires of kiss,
Empires of intimacy. Silent empires. But never this.
