You Don’t Need to Grieve for This

And what if truth is of no use?
What if lack of use is truth’s truth?

This law of this, that rule of that,
Our tricks that tell you what comes next,

Or may come, that yield odds in sums,
The best rites you’ve come up with yet—

All these may not be much like truth—
Just true as in good tools, in stone

Or steel points, an axe that strikes true,
A nail banged true, but not true as

In the sense, The Way the World Is.
Truth can’t nail The Way the World Is.

You just try to make tools that work
Well with the ways things are, like nails,

Like words, faiths, maths, laws, rules, and tricks.
But if it’s all like this or that,

If a lack of cause is truth’s truth,
Tools can’t have at the truth of it,

No more than an axe has the truth
It hacks at. Or who knows—has it?

Oh that’s just great, this haft’s come loose.
What if the truth’s no good for use?