Do Not Believe Poem by gershon hepner

Do not believe your lying eyes,
but trust the words of poets who
see all things in the world as lies
whose nuances make them sound true.

Do not believe your sharpened ears
when you hear words you want to hear,
which are the prophesies of seers
about an end that’s never near.

What should you then believe when all
you hear sounds just like double Dutch;
believe what you can taste, and fall
in love, and share the sense of touch.

Inspired by an article on Constantine Cavafy by Daniel Mendelsohn in the NYR, November 20,2008 (“As Good As Poetry Gets’”) :

Lines from the second half of “Correspondences According to Baudelaire” suggest how thoroughly the young Alexandrian had absorbed the lessons of the pioneering French modernist:

Do not believe only what you see.

The vision of poets is sharper still.

To them, Nature is a familiar garden.

In a shadowed paradise, those other
people grope along the cruel road…

11/5/08