Landscape With Owl, Grave, And Coffin Poem by Raj Arumugam

there’s a
Landscape with Grave, Coffin, and Owl
and the Owl says to you:

I don’t know;
do you know?
everybody pretends to know,
don’t they?
all they know is what they believe in
what they have faith in
and what they’ve been conditioned into…
and fixed patterns and prescribed pathways…
that’s all they know;
and to give it authority
and credibility
they flourish Revelations and Thick Books
and they use smooth emotion-packed words
like God and Love and Soul;
and they use these cliches so freely
like drinking free-flowing wine at a wedding
so that they swagger like drunks
and they sway like boxers
before the knockout blow falls on their faces…
that’s all they know, don’t they?
what they’ve been told to believe in
and seeing what they conditioned themselves into…
so do you know?
I don’t know;
do you know?
everybody pretends to know,
don’t they?
or you don’t think so
because you are one of those elect who knows…






text © Raj Arumugam,2010; Landscape with Owl, Grave, and Coffin (1836–37) by Caspar David Friedrich