It’s a popular talking point among pundits to observe we live in a ‘post-truth’ age: an era defined by the Oxford Dictionary as one “in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Pulitzer prize winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks described this place we now find ourselves in her poem ‘truth’.

“And if the sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?”

truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

Gwendolyn Brooks,  ‘Blacks’  Third World Press, 1987