'They looked through mists of blood moon, of flood and drought.' Photo: by Altınay Dinç on Unsplash
The body of truth
Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith
Each season the cannibals
selected one truth to kill.
We eat its eyes, its lungs,
the soft seed of the heart.
They spoke to us so honestly
we asked, ‘And how do you select
which truth to sacrifice?
The truth of hatred or of greed?’
They looked through mists
of blood moon, of flood and drought.
We sat beneath their stars,
their setting suns.
Then they asked us, which youth,
man or woman, do you select
to send into your wars?
The ancients or the yet to be?
Before we left, they lit a fire.
They placed one candle in the pyre.
Into its roar they offered us
one truth to sacrifice.
They gave it tongue and made us
sit as it was crucified. We sang with it
all night, in that meadow of shadows
darkening into the truth of light.
