Venus And Candor Poem by Paul Hartal

 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty',
John Keats (1795-1821)
 
 
Beauty is not truth
But an unfaithful companion
A transient mask's shadow
A deflated song of the serpent
In the evening sigh of the mirror.
 
And while in dazzling charm
Narcissus may revel
And celebrate vanity,
Grandeur, glory and grace
May also radiate
Through unsightly wrinkles.
 
And Truth?
 
Truth dances with beauty
And then it darts and predicates
The freedom of ugliness.
But compromise and fuzziness
Liquefy the firmness of verities
Scruples may beat hard
the drums of a fiery conscience
And still cannot prevent
The birth of ice cold lies.
 
Truth is not beauty
But a noun in a stanza
A chequered meadow lark
Discovered in rainy pastures
Among purple saffron flowers.
 
Or a colourful bobolink
Singing pragmatic lilts.