Saturday, March 29, 2014


CARL HARMON

Muddy Waters

The poets, they muddy the waters,
to make them appear deep.   -- Nietszche

Who will make these muddy waters clear?
Leave them alone and they will clean themselves.
Is this river a mile wide and an inch deep
Or an inch wide and a mile deep?

It’s so hard to tell these days--
The politicians and the journalists
Muddy the waters to make them appear deep
Even when they are all so shallow
And the pledge of transparency is a lie.

And so the mud is slung
As the bombs are falling
From either side across the river and the great divide
And the waters become muddier than ever,
Stagnant, in a corruption of decay
That can support neither life  nor love.

Everyone loses sight of where the
River begins and where it ends.
No one can see the sun and the moon
Reflected in the murky, choppy water.

Leave these waters alone and
They will exhaust themselves,
Become still, become clear,
Be renewed by the eternal, gentle rains.

Wiser ones look up
And follow the bright star
Shining in clear, unending sky. 

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