The Uneasy Marriage of Beauty and Truth

Beauty and truth locked eyes on a beach

on one gorgeous, sunsetted evening.

And by the next morn, after loving all night

they had already started conceiving.

“Our child will dazzle like the evening we met,”

said beauty, maternally glowing.

“In love with all nature,” said truth with a nod,

“like that beach where our love began growing.”

“What’s real,” nodded beauty, “and I hope it’s all sweet,

as the light and the joy that surrounds us.”

“Sweet or not” cautioned truth, “in pursuit of what’s real,

holding out for what’s sweet just confounds us.”

“I’m sweet” beauty glared, “you’re just getting ‘round now

to calling my sweetness irrelevant?

“Some truths are grotesque,” stammered truth to his love.

Thus into the room walked their elephant.

“There’s beauty in me, and life’s safer by far”

said truth, “when we face all reality.”

“There’s truth in me too” beauty said to here dear,

“And I doubt that what’s true is brutality.”

“How then to explain the ration of pain

we might find when we’re not walking beaches?

I think you’ll concede that there’s vice and there’s greed

And life isn’t just ice cream and peaches.”

“That’s only because, beasts like you bear your claws

giving voice to your fears and anxieties.

If we all only knew that what’s always most true

Is that love is the highest of pieties.”

And to the young couple in love but at odds

United, but each other’s thorn

In nine months and a day, philosophers say

Brave Irony, their child was born.