Even in defeat, one can reap the dividends of peace

Let me now not speak for current times but for the future,
And for the past,
But not for the present,
For that would be reckless,
Careless
And I have sworn off such ways

If you do not understand me
That's not unusual
We are humans are we not?
At least on the inside
At least for now

Even if we speak in the same language
Do we really use the same words
Each sentence, each body movement, each thought
Is enveloped in connotations, denotations, emotions and assumptions
Till the common syntax is an obscurer of the truth rather than an aide

And that is without getting to the intangibles

And what is life without the intangibles

And what is life without that most misunderstood intangible
We bear to each other
And we do not understand the other
Nor their understanding of us
But what is life without that dream of understanding

And so we try to impose a bridge upon this chaos
We try to force an understanding to bring down the truth
Of that feeling we have for another
That feeling that it is so essential that we give without misunderstanding
That feeling that we so desperately want to understand in the others' eyes

And so it comes to war
We misunderstanding
Take advantage of the fog of our mutual fiction of communication
To bring down what we wish were the feelings that are being misunderstood
That we might be able to understand
But without agreement
And how can their be agreement
And in such conflict

Yet to understand is not always to triumph
Your conception may not be conveyable
It might not even exist
Even in your mind
And if what you wanted to understand
Is worth understanding
Then can it be worth understanding even if it is only the others' definition
That remains

And so it comes to failure
To defeat
Both dismal and deep
But we emerge a little closer
Not understanding still
But a little closer

And in that we advance the longer triumph
Far down the road