The idea of this poem, started when I was reading a book called “The Night Circus”. I thought about how children are always told not to lie, or to even spin the truth, because it will end in pain for them and that it is not ‘the right thing to do’. We grow up being told not to be dishonest - and yet somehow, become adults who do it almost compulsively. The girl is the innocence, and the magician the world that we, as children, were once entranced by and convinced was exactly as it seemed - only to discover that it can be full of scorn and evil and seems to be out to get us. The voice that speaks to the girl, is the voice of a mother, and she tells the girl to use the magicians’ deception against him – that is to say that she loses her innocence and turns to his cruel tricks in order to survive; she herself needs lies, and being cunning becomes a necessity. In this world, we too must be cunning and occasionally deceptive if we want to get the outcome we seek.
The ending, by asking, “what bad could come of one little lie?”, is supposed to draw the reader to the insight of a full circle - that the man himself embodied lies and was cruel and had no love even for the innocent – so what bad could come? Is that we begin only to know how to be liars and to deceive and that we believe it is the only way to get ahead in this world. Like the magician did.
He has no care for what his deceptions do - that they shatter the previous joy and beauty of what the girl thought she knew.
This poem was inspired because I hope it does make one wonder if we lie to protect ourselves or to intentionally harm others to get ahead. There are two sides to each story, and if I flipped this poem, it would be form the magicians perspective – the perspective of someone so corrupted by his web of lies, that it is now all he knows.