It Became Truth by Convention Rather Than Being Truth

IT HAS BECOME TRUTH BY CONVENTION
RATHER THAN BEING TRUTH


In a simulated Spain near Orlando, I sat
In my ambassadorial
Clothes,
She in her Ophelia dress.
This Ophelia
Dress modeled on the dress Ophelia wore
When appearing
In a painting and floating on shallow water
Among
A scattering of wax flowers during Lent.

This simulated Spain was a marvelous Spain.
The marvelous Spain the surrealists sought
In their seeking of the marvelous.
This simulated Spain was the best Spain
That money could buy.
Imported from Spain, chefs, dancers, kibitzers,
Beggars,
After the esurient entrepreneur made a study
Of Nietzsche,
He had manufactured a gored matador.
There was a mechanical flamenco dancer
Whose tapping
Of her high steel heels
Always created an aura of Duende--
Although her technique was faulty and praised
With its destabilization of the traditional rules
And her interrupted narrative.
The mechanical dancer was vociferously applauded
When the machine unsettled the illusion
Of subjective autonomy and conscious control.

As we sipped simulated Spanish wine whose grapes
Were grown in the northern part of North Dakota,
We were joyous
Because we had rejected
The notion of individual subjectivity
As unified and stable.
It was wonderful sitting here
in this simulated Spain
And not believing in anything.
We were so happy that nothing could disturb
Our happiness, not
Even
The sad couple at the next table,
The couple who still believed
In traditional values and the old verities.

We, two, had cast off our masks
of social identity
And were hilarious
In our enjoyment of the Heideggerian notion
Of the multiple and temporal experience
of Being.

We, two, decided to tango.
We tangoed over the border into France,
And then tangoed over the border into Italy.
We in Italy,
Gripped each other so tightly
In a lustful embrace
That we appeared to world as being one,
As we did
In a simulated Sorrento
A tarantella.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Seeker Magazine