>> This poem is a takeoff against people who [inaudible].
[ Laughter ]
It's called, 'Wall, Cave, and Pillar Statements, After Asoka.'
In order to perfect all readers, the statements should be carved on rock walls, on cave walls,
and on the side of pillars so the charm
of their instruction can affect the mountain climbers near the cliffs,
the plainsmen near the pillars, and the city people near the caves they go to on vacations.
The statements should, and in a fair script, spell out the right text and gloss
of the Philosopher's jocular remark.
Text: "Honesty is the best policy."
Gloss: "He means not 'best' but 'policy,' (this is the joke of it) whereas
in fact Honesty is Honesty, Best is Best, and Policy is Policy,
the three terms being not related, but here loosely allied.
What is more important is that 'is' is, but the rocklike truth of the text resides in the 'the.'
[ Laughter ]
The 'the' is The.
By this means the amusing sage has raised or caused to be raised the triple standard
in stone: the single standard is too simple for life, the double is mere degrading hypocrisy,
but the third combines the first two in a possible way,
and contributes something unsayable of its own: this is the pit, nut, seed,
or stone of the fruit when the fruit has been digested: It is good to do good
for the wrong reason, better to do good for the good reason, and best of all to do good good--
i.e. when the doer and doe and whatever passes between them are beyond all words like 'grace'
or 'anagogic insight,' or definitions like 'particular instance of a hoped-at-law,
and which the rocks alone can convey.
This is the real reason for the rock walls, the cave walls, and pillars,
and not the base desires for permanence and display that the teacher's conceit suggests.'
That is the end of the statements, but, in order to go on a way after the end so as to make
up for having begun after the beginning, and thus to come around to it in order
to include the whole thing, add: "In some places the poignant slogan, 'Morality is a bad joke
like everything else, 'may be written or not, granted that space exists
for the vulgar remarks, the dates, initials and hearts of lovers,
and all other graffiti of the prisoners of this world."