poetry is able
to sing because
it reaches inside
our collective knowing
into our cultural memory
our shared repertoire of
significations without which
metaphor symbol and allusion
would have no bearing
just as music presents
the appearance of the harmonic
its tonal and rhythmic unities
are merely a social construct
crafted not out of the
phenomena of physics but
rather from the discourses
which silently determine
the discernment of our minds
even beauty exists only
in the resonance of
how the outside world
is appropriated by consciousness
it resides in the afterthought
yet it only can resonate
in the material of the social
therefore we must delight
in the discursive in the course
of arguing metaphysics
or pondering the constitution
of reality plunging the depths
of philosophical inquiry
nitpicking the superficial
boundaries between
the material and ideal
or worse yet dickering
over the boundaries within
a slippery cartesian dualism
and while most discussions
of what constitutes the real
would seem arguably pointless
and at best academic
meaningfully confronting the real
requires another more
troubling confrontation
between what it is
we have to think
and what we are given
to think by the discourses
that not only shape but
determine our consciousness
and thus we realize that
beauty is learned
but so is truth
and that is all we need to know