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Friday, September 2, 2011

The Death Of Beauty





How can beauty be killed?
Melt the ice caps;
Beauties that we've known and loved
will die.
Polar bears will swim to exhaustion,
their cubs will starve.
A beautiful creature is dying,
but is beauty dead?
Poach ivory from elephants until
there are no more elephants.
A great and profound beauty is dying.
I feel its death throes in my body, but still
I doubt that beauty is dead.
There is no end of beauty.  Perhaps
when a small piece of beauty is murdered,
it diminishes those of us who live in this time,
for we are accomplice to the crime.
I don't see myself as a beauty killer.
I see myself as a beauty maker.
But I can't stop the tides that are rising,
the beaches that are drowning,
the skies that are fading.
We killed beauty for comfort.  I did.
You did.  I bought into the con
until I saw the contempt in the con.
When I saw the con, I stomped on it like a poisoned artifact.
Beauty killer!  Murderer!  Earth hater!
Is beauty dead?  It can't be.
The desolate tide flats where bones show in the mud,
where mangled soldiers lie, where steel and gunpowder
show their leavings.  That's what I see, but that isn't all
there is to see.  Beauty still lives.  Beauty is immortal.
We  may kill ourselves with the lies
we have lived.  We may go the way of the whale and the polar bear.
swimming until we're exhausted.
Beauty may be wounded, convalescing, emaciated, ravaged,
but with or without us
beauty will return.



2 comments:

  1. A lovely poem elucidating a deep truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. There are so many days when I think,"If just one person would read and understand such and such a bit of my work." You did. And since you're anonymous you must be the same person that read another such and such piece of my work, so I'll feel much better, knowing that you'll be around.

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