Adjudicating Claims of Truth Using Math, and Not Convenience

I don’t believe it just because it’s true.

An interim beyond a certain length

of time attenuates the tensile strength

of a claim; our years on earth, though brief and few

against history’s vast, impersonal view,

reduce the truth each rainy spring by a tenth:

T-zero times (one minus point one) to the Nth.

It’s simple math. There’s nothing you can do.

Had you told me right away, or yet

mentioned it in 1999,

or even yesterday, I would achieve

true belief, quite against any threat

to my politics’ necessary bottom line.

Your deadline’s passed, alas. I disbelieve.