One of poetry's several merits is its ability to crystallize a truth in a single group of words. In response to a horrifying tragedy, Haley Patail wrote about a murderer, "When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail," encapsulating an insight into the criminal mind.
Writing about the deceased victim and a funeral, she wrote, "I would go and give words to the dust-heavy air if it would change something, I would pretend that I know how to kneel in pews if it would make me feel right about this." The poet has recognized two spiritual truths here: that our songs and prayers do not change the fact that our loved ones have gone into the next life, that we bitterly grieve because we miss them; funerals are for the living, not for the dead - to remind the living about God and the afterlife - a reminder which will neither bring the deceased back into this life, nor ease our mourning, but a reminder which centers and stabilizes us by placing the events into a global, objective, and neutral frame of reference. By stating that our spiritual meditations neither "change something" nor make us "feel right about this," the poet has communicated these two truths in an efficient economy of words.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once made a comment to the effect that, if one wants to investigate eternal truths, poetry can often do a better job than philosophy.
