On April 1, out of Solidarity, We Celebrate the Loss of Our Heavenly Wisdom

 

In between this Charybdis and Scylla,

two monsters on the way to Rome,

in between the love for errors

                                    and the perilous erotism for the truth,

mankind swings and rocks

 

                        as if it was always where

Odysseus must have lost his crew

            and where the world is once more drowning

                        as in the time of Noah’s Flood,

 

when, after few thousand years of the Most Moral Decalogue,

                                                whoever would dare to broadcast

that ‘everything is fake and everything is false,’

wouldn’t be—oddly much off.

 

Even though,

according to the news usually served

sandwiched between celebrities baring it all,

mankind has not finally decided yet

            whether deadlier

are its mistakes

                        or the truth.

 

But most do seem to trust—and religiously almost—

                                                            the tricks and voluntary lies

                                    in getting them safely across—

 

and so, ten days after the Spring Equinox,

when, to be born again,

                        even God had to die and pay his time to Hell,

                        and when, amid colds and rains,

Nature rouses once more

to live and love,

 

we celebrate the Holy Day of Fools,

                        as if the lies and tricks—

                                                making the fools of us all—

            were not happening each day and every hour still,

 

and as if mankind has not fattened and fed

on daily rations of made-up pell-mell of lies,

foul deserts, and tutti fruti

soaked in drinks of Hell.

 

Just as it is always the multicolored Piper—

                        who is everything to everyone—

is the one who leads on his many blind

                                    as if these were no more

than a bunch of dancing mice.

 

            In the old days emperors who reigned

                                                by making fools of everyone,

thus as if the world had stopped,

                                    and it was always April 1,

 

            had one special Fool—the Court Jester—

                        in Tarot with ever one foot

over the edge of abyss—

                        who alone could speak the truth,

he alone—the truth to power,

           

provided that the truth was safely lost

                                    in the fools and tutti futti

made of fibs and gags and junk and jokes

                                    and that no one would take seriously

one such a fool,

a royal truthful clown;

 

                                    and what’s more in the legend too,

Noah of the Flood and Ark himself

is said to initiate the Fool’s Worldly Fete

when, on April 1^st, he sent out the dove,

the dove of Venus, the dove of Love,

before the waters receded

                        on her foolish round—

 

as if, in the world cursed by some jealous God,

the truth as well as true love had been damned

by being let to come only way ahead of time

or too late—as if, in our world of shams,

lovers of the truth must count as dupes.