The Theory of Meaning

One might, in the future

Posit that poetry was my religion.

It was not.

 

Rather, I used poetry as a vessel

To establish—by two or three witnesses—

What was true.

 

First, my knowledge came from the Bible.

And often poetry—even wicked or not—

Would affirm the teachings I find in scripture.

 

It may be the ugliness of Communism

Or the reality of communication.

But, great poetry foreshadowed

The truth;—

It proved truth could be found.

 

It did not supplement my religion.

It, rather—even if professing not to—

Confirmed it.

 

Because what was often on the pages

Did work.

More often than not, our most flagrant Atheists,

In their poetry, were prophets.

More than in essays

The poem had predicted and far surpassed

All other human inovations

By showing us where our race would end.

 

Because it was dreams;—

Poetry is vision.

Whether a demon or a saint

The poets had foretasted, eerily,

Every major change in history

In principle, and they did this

By understanding the passing bodies of knowledge

Established throughout time and space—

Captured in the portraits of literature.

 

Poems are prophetic

Because they built off of the other great poets

To see more clearly a vision

And to make less opaque

The future.

As Keats noted, the future is…

We poets are rather windows to it.

The radical is the catalyst to it;

And often radicals find in poetry

A formula for their own success.

 

I, I, liked to merely understand it

What all was in my limited grasp to understand.

However… I would also like to preserve my right to do so

Which is why my poetry was written.

Not to change the world, but to simply preserve

This freedom of man to see glimpses of the future.