There was a moment when he felt the flight,
when rustic rumbles underpinned his voice,
and like some slick and unfelt joy, fled truth.
Hold tight! Hold tight! O knavish trucksy tongue,
that hides some trifling thing from her mind’s light,
Hold tight! And for one moment, let it lie,

else of that love so strong you’ll build a lie
which trickles, ambles, down a hill so slight,
and still for so long gathers, feels so light.
Yet day by day he hears his traitor voice
and feels the serpent fork of his red tongue,
that licks and laps at crumbles still of truth.

To tell the truth–I’ll tell you now the truth:
he never meant to start it with a lie.
But when he saw her parted lips and tongue,
the way her shoulders slumped just oh-so-slight,
and heard the minstrel dulcet of her voice,
he could no longer live outside her light.

And so of past and passing times made light,
as though in joy he could still smother truth,
by adamant refusal to give voice
to all that deeply buried then did lie.
And if the peeks of harshest then were slight,
he’d glide them over with that golden tongue.

Rejoice as woven reeds spring forth from tongue,
and untruths breed like rays of dappled light.
As mountains roar in cascades born of slight,
and slipp’ry straying from the path of truth.
The child of a lie must be a lie,
the silence of my youth destroys my voice.

So when at last she fine’ly found her voice
it was to strip him bare with her keen tongue–
although she never knew the seedling lie.
And when one day she found her heart alight,
what ended it for her was simple truth:
that how in spite of love he seemed so slight.

His voice was tuned to dampen all his light,
as tongue wove wicker walls where once was truth,
and from that slight turn, life, became a lie.