A sentence uttered makes a world appear

Where all things happen as it says they do;

We doubt the speaker, not the tongue we hear:

Words have no word for words that are not true.

Syntactically, though, it must be clear;

One cannot change the subject half-way through,

Nor alter tenses to appease the ear:

Arcadian tales are hard-luck stories too.

But should we want to gossip all the time,

Were fact not fiction for us at its best,

Or find a charm in syllables that rhyme,

Were not our fate by verbal chance expressed,

As rustics in a ring-dance pantomime

The Knight at some lone cross-roads of his quest?