Another one from E.E. Cummings’ “Santa Claus: A Morality”:
SANTA CLAUS
Ladies and gentlemen: if you all have been
deceived by some impostor — so have I.
If you have all been tricked and ruined — so have I.
And so has every man and woman, I say.
I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:
we are all of us no longer glad and whole,
we have all of us sold our spirits into death.,
we are all of us the sick parts of a sick thing,
we have all of us lost our living honesty,
and so we are all of us not any more ourselves.
— Who can tell the truth from falsehood any more?
I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:
No man or woman on this big small earth.
–How should our sages miss the mark of life,
and our most skillful players lose the game?
your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me:
because all know, and no one understands.
–O, we are all so very full of knowing,
that we are empty, empty of understanding;
but, by that emptiness I swear to you
(and if I lie, ladies and gentlemen,
hang me a little higher than the sky)
all men and every woman may be wrong;
but nobody who lives can fool a child.
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