Poets' Paradox

by Peter Saint-Andre

2017-01-31

Here's another draft poem for my far-future book Songs of Zarathustra:

Poets' Paradox

Hearken how he says, in verse,
That the poets always lie - or worse,
To their everlasting shame,
That they ever vie for petty fame.

Their unbounded vanity
Leads them far from piety;
They live not the holy writ
Whose deed is but to utter it.

I think this might make a fine opening salvo, with its Nietzschean questioning of the entire enterprise of writing a cycle of poems about a poetic philosopher. The reference to the Cretan Paradox merely adds to the fun.

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