“The concept of Reality

Is based upon a fallacy”,

Said the Flying Fish

To the doe-eyed Unicorn

Who was polishing her horn

With her beautiful cloven front hooves.

Sang the rhapsodist

Whose sweet voice

Issued from beneath eyes

Which gleamed in the fiery flickering flames

Of a bright wood fire

In that clearing on Chios.

As reported to me by Critias

As we sat at the party on the flat, kennelled, roof

Of that house in the Kerameikos.

As we looked

Towards the star-lit Akropolis.

Write I against the margin

Of a black Welsh night”.

“It is an abstraction”, he said, “and

Hence does not exist”.

The unicorn gazed at him quizzically

With that look in her eyes

Which he found most attractive.

“Each of us carry our own reality”, he said, “and

The language which we use

Is perfectly submissive to this fact.

The weight of the meaning

Behind the words which we use

Is entirely dependent

Upon our own reality.

You interpret the words which I use

In light of your own reality,

Which is not the same as my reality.

It therefore follows that each word

Has a multiplicity of meanings

For each person who exists,

For each reality that exists, and

All meanings cannot be known to each user”.

© Ian David Wall 2022