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Tag: Geoffrey Chaucer

The Eyes Have It: Chaucerian madrigal

Published on June 13, 2025

If we can see a thing, we call those blind
who claim that it is nothing, just a dream,
and ridicule each other’s faulty eyes,

imagining the great truths that we find
are the exclusive provenance of “mine”.
If we can see a thing, we call those blind
who claim that it is nothing, just a dream.

But is it all just a trick of the mind,
a clever ruse of being that just seems
so real we use its spider webs for beams?
If we can see a thing, we call those blind
who claim that it is nothing, just a dream,
and ridicule each other’s faulty eyes.

13 Jun 2025

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What Good is That: rime royal

Published on May 2, 2017

What is the Truth, that we spend all our days,
from birth to death, imagining so fair
that we invent, seek to avoid or praise
some vain ideal constructed from thin air,
that as illusion is beyond compare;
it casts religions merely to take form
that neither breathes nor catches fire to warm.

What is the Truth that holds no little lies,
that is just pure just “that” and so and so.
it disappears from view when cut to size,
each grain of sand both yes and no;
the smoke and mirrors added just for show.
Each leaf of truth is part seed of deceit;
the laurel leaf the child of base defeat.

What is the Truth? An absolute so still
it stagnates to allow algae to grow,
and in the rotting flesh of every kill
injects the future’s chance of overflow,
converting into yes each maybe so?
What good is that, some fickle god’s ennui,
to folks just trying to live, like you and me?

2 MAY 2017

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