We are hard

i

We are hard on each other

and call it honesty,

choosing our jagged truths

with care and aiming them across

the neutral table.

The things we say are

true; it is our crooked

aim, our choices

turn them criminal.

ii

Of course your lies

are more amusing:

you make them new each time.

Your truths, painful and boring

repeat themselves over & over

perhaps because you own

so few of them

iii

A truth should exist,

it should not be used

like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

iv

Does the body lie

moving like this, are these

touches, hairs, wet

soft marble my tongue runs over

lies you are telling me?

Your body is not a word,

it does not lie or

speak truth either.

It is only

here or not here.

—

From Selected Poems (1965-1975) by Margaret Atwood, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987.