Moon at Half Past Noon

First, plant the seed of it deep in the mind,
Where doubt is a weed, easily kindled.
Water it daily with headlines and ink,
Until its pale stalk starts to rise from the brink.

Then, build a museum to house its new form.
Polish the glass where its new truth lies warm.
Hang a brass plaque that explains its old pain,
A story of loss, and of glory, and gain.

Teach it in classrooms with confident chalk.
Make the children repeat it, in unison, talk.
Let it be sung by the choir in streets,
A rhythm for patriotic heartbeats.

Let it be carved in the marble and stone
Of heroes who stood, terrifying, alone.
Let it be whispered by mothers, at night,
As a fundamental, unchangeable light.

Let it become not a fact, but a feel,
A texture of truth, terribly real.
A landscape of memory, fertile and vast,
Where the shape of the original bone is recast.

For years it will harden, a fossil of thought,
A relic of battles that never were fought.
The sediment layers of story and song
Will bury the truth, all the day long.

And when you finally dig, with your trembling hands,
Through the strata of faith in these manufactured lands,
When you brush off the dust of a hundred lost years,
And confront what remains, despite the lies and the tears…

You will find it is small. And brittle. And plain.
A simple, forgotten, and silent refrain.
A fragment of something that dared to be true,
Murdered and buried by me and by you.

And the terror is not in the bone’s simple shape,
But the beautiful lie we allowed it to drape,
And the world we built, elegant, tall, and supreme,
On the ghost of a truth we were told not to see.