Vojtina’s Ars Poetica (Extract) Poem by Janos Arany

Mendacem oporrer esse memorem.
Poets should read that: it applies to them,
It fits my metre, and it hits the mark.
To act on it, of course, requires pluck.
It means (translated freely I admit):
‘Lie, poet, lie; but don’t be caught at it.’
Liars are all lame ducks and often slip,
And once a poem slips it can’t get up.

Though manners, morals, are at one, decrying
The gross impurity of common lying,
Poets must specialise in the depiction
Of highly-coloured worlds that are pure fiction.
Do not, indeed, the very heavens lie
Above us? Oh, the innocent blue sky!
Is the sun really haloed? Does he rise
And run above us? When we lionise
Leonids, aren’t we bluffed? And then the blue
Of distant mountain, forest - is that true?
Does not the rainbow’s bridge pile guile on guile?
And are horizons really there at all?
The fata morgana, when it shows to you
A lake with trees and steeples cut in two,
Tops hovering, the other halves reversed –
Doesn’t this cheat your sight and cheat your thirst?
So all things bright and beautiful are lies.
The truth’s a skeleton, not very nice.
Please, poet, cover it with flesh and blood;
Lie, poet, lie: it is your livelihood.

If you convince me that what seems is there,
You’re a true poet though a perjurer.
He was no shyster, that Athenian
Who squealed as piglets squeal; the other one,
The peasant with a real pig in his coat,
Might make his real pig cry, might fleer and flout
Our sound-effects man all he liked, but earned
Loud boos and hisses from the people round.
They felt that - while the pig-impersonator
Sounded as pigs do sound - the genuine creature
(Real piggy flesh and blood, sheer pig right through)
Squealed nonetheless as piglets seldom do …