Venus and Candor

by Paul Hartal

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”,
John Keats (1795-1821)

Beauty is not truth
But an unfaithful companion,
A transient mask’s shadow,
A deflated song of the serpent
In the evening sigh of the mirror.

And while in dazzling charm
Narcissus may revel
And celebrate vanity,
Grandeur, glory and grace
May also radiate
Through unsightly wrinkles.

And Truth?

Truth dances with beauty
And then it darts and predicates
The freedom of ugliness.
But compromise and fuzziness
Liquefy the firmness of verities.
Scruples may beat hard
The drums of a fiery conscience
And still cannot prevent
The birth of ice cold lies.

Truth is not beauty
But a noun in a stanza,
A chequered meadow lark
Discovered in rainy pastures
Among purple saffron flowers.

Or a colourful bobolink
Singing pragmatic lilts.




Paul Hartal's picture

ABOUT THE POET ~
A man of many Odysseys, Paul Hartal is a Canadian poet, author and artist born in Szeged, Hungary. His critically acclaimed books include Postmodern Light (poetry, 2006), Love Poems (2004), The Kidnapping of the Painter Miró (novel, 1997, 2001), The Brush and the Compass (1988), Painted Melodies (1983) and A History of Architecture (1972) ., In 1975 he published in Montreal A Manifesto on Lyrical Conceptualism. Lyco Art is a new element on the periodic table of aesthetics, which intertwines the logic of passion with the passion of logic. In 1980 the Lyrical Conceptualist Society hosted the First International Poetry Exhibition in Montreal., In 1978 Hartal exhibited his paintings at the Musée du Luxembourg and the Raymond Duncan Gallery in France and his canvas Flowers for Cézanne won the Prix de Paris. He also has displayed his oeuvre in museums and galleries in New York, Montreal, Budapest, as well as many other places., He approaches poetry with the credo that the heart of poetry is the poetry of the heart. A recurring theme of his recent work explores the human tragedies of wars and genocides.


Last updated March 12, 2012