Travail, Famille, Patrie*

Flowers from an unknown garden
left by a nameless person
on the grave of an unpublished poet :

apprehension is both fear and shape
of recognition - then comes the rape.

Justice, Fairness, Truth :
ideas fall apart -  become
prized pieces on a shelf,
the glassy frontier of the Self.

What you know
and what you want to know
can (of course) be very different.
Then there's the immortal drain
of what you need
(or think you need) to know
- which you will never ascertain.

Life is a dandelion-seed.
Life is a keeper at the zoo.

*This triadic motto replaced the more vacuous Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
in Marshal Pétain's rump État Français from 1940 to 1942, when the Nazis occupied the whole country.