A Catalogue
You wrote me a letter in a very fast hand
The letter was truth or at least looked like it
I wrote you a letter in return that also looked like truth
Though I cannot say at this point how much truth there was in it
Your truth was very sad a lot of the time and I am not sure if you know how sad it was
We sent truths back and forth to each other for an entire season
Sometimes your truth flavored my dinner, as I was coming fresh from having read it
My parents appreciated the truth as I usually slept during meals
Perhaps because there was not enough truth in them
There was not enough truth in anything those days
I could not have identified truth in a leaf pile though I understood it
We all understand truth we know it when we see it
I understood the truth of your letters and at times to my mind it transmuted to love
But one thing we learn is that love and truth are separate
You might tell the truth without telling love
You might feel love while leaving the truth under a coat in the foyer
I was very deluded about the truth and about love
I was very young, at the age when truth is a garment and love is a garment
You pick them both up and put them in a bag
You take them off when you’re by yourself
If you want you can write a message on them
I tried to apply truth to the common world
I found that the truth did not stick like ridicule
I found that the climate conditions were hostile to truth
though not to love, which we were told was increasingly seen with truth
Why just the other day, under a staircase, the two of them
They had a smell, truth and love, that they handed back and forth
The truth of your letters and the love of your letters were nowhere here
I had not thought there were different kinds of each
When my thoughts of love and truth changed so did the cloud formations
and so did the way in which I addressed daylight
Previously with a squint and now with a frown
I was trying on someone else’s frown
and then I was trying on my own
I cannot say if anyone noticed
I cannot say if anyone saw the truth or felt love for me in the midst of my changes
I would not have noticed if they had felt love or expressed truth
I was experimenting with the sounds of various words, such as truth and love
And then I would come home and put it into a letter
