You speak to me, but does your speech <br />With truest truth your thought convey? <br />I listen to your words and each <br />Is what I wait to hear you say. <br />The pattern that your lips reveal, <br />How does it measure with your mind? <br />What undertones do you conceal? <br />Your smile is sweet - but what's behind? <br /> <br />I speak to you, but do I tell <br />The secret working of my brain? <br />Frank honesty would make life hell, <br />And truth be tantamount to pain. <br />When deep into the mind one delves, <br />Appalling verities we view; <br />If we betrayed our inner selves, <br />Would you hate man and I hate you? <br /> <br />Are we not strangers each to each, <br />And all alone we live and die? <br />Deception is the stuff of speech, <br />And life a smug and glossy lie, <br />Where puppet-like our parts we play: <br />The first in public we rehearse, <br />The second when we shrink away <br />into our private universe. <br /> <br />The soul has its grim hinterland <br />'Twere better never to explore; <br />Dark jungles where obscenely planned <br />Prowl monsters of primaeval lore; <br />With primal fear our lives are fraught, <br />And cravenly we cower behind <br />The silences of secret thought, <br />The murky mazes of the Mind.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hinterland/
