truth

A painter’s art can conjure life’s delight;
His brush can kiss a woman’s lips and seed
A grove of oaks whose tender leaves bedight
The evening sky, and murmur midnight’s rede.

The sculptor chisels subtleties from stone
Or weaves the softest cloths of brazen thread
To clothe immortal gods, or gild the throne
Of some archaic queen who’s long lain dead.

A poet sets in bezel by his pen
The diamonds that he catches as they fall
From parted lips and opened tomes from when
Our wasted words were fresh of scholar’s scrawl,

But I can’t find a chain so precious as
To hold your whisper.