This poem is called "Truth."
Truth is what you can't tell.
Truth is for the grave.
Truth is only the flowing shadow cast
by the wind-tossed elm when sun is bright and grass well mowed.
Truth is a downy feather you blow from your lips
to shine in sunlight.
Truth is a trick that history over and over
again plays on us.
Its shape is unclear in shadow or brightness,
and its utterance, the wisp we strive
to catch in the scream of a locomotive
desperately blowing for the tragic crossing.
Truth is a curse laid on us in the garden.
Truth is a serpents joke.
It is a sun-stung dust devil that
swirls on the lee side of God when he drowses.
Truth is a long soliloquy of the dead, all their long night.
Truth this what would be told us by the dead
if they could hold conversation with the living
and thus fulfill their obligation to us--
their accumulated wisdom must be immense.
[CLAPPING]