A single voice asks, “What is truth?” And thousands, millions, billions answer in response. In the east they answer with chants, dances, and riddles, and in the west they answer with analytic discourses, arid charades, and pseudo-theological chicanery.
My gospels professor said earlier this quarter, “People who read poetry will be better readers of the gospels…” I thought he was being facetious. As the quarter has progressed, I have realized he was serious and have realized the wisdom in his pronouncement.
A line of poetry or a paragraph of story cannot be matched by a volume of discourse, however well articulated it may be. It is poetry that plumbs the depths of truth and surfaces again without losing an ounce, an ounce of something true. And it is the person who reads poetry and it is the poets themselves who plumb the depths resurfacing in silence. In silence because it was in the depths that truth was spoken and having since resurfaced they are appropriately silent.
Much ink, sweat, and blood is spilled every generation answering the question, “What is truth?” But I say, “Let truth be truth lest it be dismantled into something else.”
“What is truth?” Ask a poet I say, ask a poet!
Finally, someone with a little sense. I'll have to read this Whitman with a more charitable heart.
ReplyDelete"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head."--Chesterton