52 Beauty poems

Madame, ye ben of al beaute shryne As fer as cercled is the mapamounde, For as the cristal glorious ye shyne, And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde. Therwith ye ben so mery and so jocounde That at a revel whan that I see you daunce, It is an oynement unto my wounde, Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce. For thogh I wepe of teres ful a tyne, Yet may that wo myn herte nat confounde; Your semy voys that ye so smal out twyne Maketh my thoght in joy and blis habounde. So curtaysly I go with love bounde That to myself I sey in my penaunce, "Suffyseth me to love you, Rosemounde, Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce." Nas neuer pyk walwed in galauntyne As I in love am walwed and ywounde, For which ful ofte I of myself devyne That I am trew Tristam the secounde. My love may not refreyde nor affounde, I brenne ay in an amorous plesaunce. Do what you lyst, I wyl your thral be founde, Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

There is a garden in her face Where roses and white lilies grow; A heav'nly paradise is that place Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow. There cherries grow which none may buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry. Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row, Which when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow; Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry. Her eyes like angels watch them still, Her brows like bended bows do stand, Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill All that attempt with eye or hand Those sacred cherries to come nigh, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live rememb’red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

A Translation for Robert Jones A diamond Is there At the heart of the moon or the branches or my nakedness And there is nothing in the universe like diamond Nothing in the whole mind. The poem is a seagull resting on a pier at the end of the ocean. A dog howls at the moon A dog howls at the branches A dog howls at the nakedness A dog howling with pure mind. I ask for the poem to be as pure as a seagull’s belly. The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond Two words called seagull are peacefully floating out where the waves are. The dog is dead there with the moon, with the branches, with my nakedness And there is nothing in the universe like diamond Nothing in the whole mind.

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes. The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows. Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

When the medication she was taking caused tiny vessels in her face to break, leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks, my sister said she knew she would never be beautiful again. After all those years of watching her reflection in the mirror, sucking in her stomach and standing straight, she said it was a relief, being done with beauty, but I could see her pause inside that moment as the knowledge spread across her face with a fine distress, sucking the peach out of her lips, making her cute nose seem, for the first time, a little knobby. I’m probably the only one in the whole world who actually remembers the year in high school she perfected the art of being a dumb blond, spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab, tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill which was her specialty, while some football player named Johnny with a pained expression in his eyes wrapped his thick finger over and over again in the bedspring of one of those pale curls. Or how she spent the next decade of her life auditioning a series of tall men, looking for just one with the kind of attention span she could count on. Then one day her time of prettiness was over, done, finito, and all those other beautiful women in the magazines and on the streets just kept on being beautiful everywhere you looked, walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance in which you sense they always seem to have one hand touching the secret place that keeps their beauty safe, inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it— It was spring. Season when the young buttercups and daisies climb up on the mulched bodies of their forebears to wave their flags in the parade. My sister just stood still for thirty seconds, amazed by what was happening, then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head as if she was throwing something out, something she had carried a long ways, but had no use for anymore, now that it had no use for her. That, too, was beautiful.

My memory of a perfect scent: pine, sage, and cypress; My friends' faith in the power of rough and winding paths to take me up a mountain and bring me back. Specimens plucked from that mountain's pastures: Indian paintbrush, sego lily, ordinary wildflowers. How I got them is a story of friendship and passion Nancy, now a doctor, once a shy sophmore in college Her husband Mike, the second, better one, and their obsession with the Great Outdoors—hence an Idaho address. Boise's Northend is a throwback to neighborhoods American—nice homes Next to two-story garden apartments down the street from a mansion. Bikes and dogs and hand-pushed lawn mowers. Where they dwell is a bungalow that spirits Memphis, Tennessee circa 1971: The Who blasting off a turntable, marijuana-scented air, boys with long hair, girls wearing their boyfriends' blue jeans, bourbon and acid. Paperbacks, record albums, text books piled up—azaleas on the parkway; a howl of buzzing bees late spring just before graduation. Their bungalow has dueling computers and a real backyard. While Nancy and Mike's boxes are slowly being unpacked, Their bicycles are carefully racked inside their front door. Everyone is a thief out West. If you leave your bikes on the porch They disappear. If you find water, someone else will divert it. There are those who fight about the wind. Others the sun. All angling for rights—mineral, water, air—that only comes with political power. Oh, my friends who love to hike, to ski, to bike and me, they love Are driving me from Boise to Ketchum through mountain and valley beauty. High desert heat is clear, dry and when your body rises out of  a chilly car, BLAM. From there you enter another air conditioning zone: a general store at the edge of mountain lore. This place has everything from Bibles to good bourbon. I almost bought a foot long sausage. I almost bought a gun. I did buy cowboy postcards, mostly made for fun. Food and security. Winter just over the ridge, four weeks hence. I used to watch Death Valley Days. Death was hinted, but not shown—the wagon turned over, The wagon train a going. O, those long-suffering white people fearful of Indians and scared of bandits, desperate for shade, for water, for land flowing milk and honey. Hard-bitten men and sad-eyed women trekking. How grand those verdant acres were to be. What they got was land just green enough for wandering herds of long-horned beasts and no where to farm, no where to hide. Today, the wind machines whip around:                         BIG ENERGY. Horses gambol and graze on that patch of land or this keen slope. No wheat and corn, not even dope grows here. But silver, gold, treasures unknown lode these mountains inviting speculation, misery, and bad legislation. A few miles up from Sun Valley, we enter a trail. Mike and Nancy smile and cajole. Straw hat and baseball cap attest to sun's plenty. Their walking sticks to the rocks' ready challenge to ankles and limbs. Our water pouches are overflowing. What were my friends thinking? We slip and slide on the side of this mountain and step aside for the sculpted women in tank tops and biker shorts—trotting as fast as Nancy and Mike's favorite dog She runs ahead following the blonde beauties until all is shadow. We greet each other with glee. I am the novice hiker. I am afraid of falling into thin air. One large Black woman with a bum knee. What were they thinking? She will love the smell. Pine, sage, and cypress. She will love the sound. Wind shakes aspens. Water crinkles rock She will love the sight. Wildflowers—whites, yellows, purples and reds: Indian paintbrush, sego lily, the wily cinquefoil. When friends give you what you need, what more can you ask? Oh the pleasure in a mountain's power to quiet a panicked heart. The glade refined. Hawk's home, wolf's dream, bears far away. Stewards of American beauty—these are the paths my friends make in wild places —the rise and fall of future walks. I salute their obsession for Idaho's red undulating hills. Whose mountain ranges east to west like those in the Himalayas says a guidebook, but ours is a different story—in this young mountain, on these new hills, circumspect is the American West. Where people steal a drop of ore, a native flower, a piece of splendor day in and day out.

You can't argue beauty's not an accident, the particular heft and angle of a chromosome's spin. A tarted spangle, bright lanyard twist, the slip of cells weighting this boat uneven from stern to prow. We're all skittery as marbles on  a marble floor. Beauty stays, then goes; it fades, we say, something about years and sun, the nights we slept in makeup and left mascara like ashes on the pillowcase. We burned through every one of our dreams. I wasn't always a stepmother, you know. There were whole years when I was a girl. But now, these ladies sell me moisturizer, stand close in their lab coats, pretending at science in a fog of perfume. They wield a contour brush and my cheekbone pops. The magic settles uneasy; it turns out fairy dust was always fake. And the lipstick's made from beetles, shells crushed vermillion. My color is Fleshpot, they say, it's Folie or Fixation. It's Wilderness; it's Artificial Earth. They can't quite make themselves care. We'll waste it, they know, whatever we've been given.

DIALOGUE T.C. J.S. Thom. Didst thou not find the place inspired, And flowers, as if they had desired No other sun, start from their beds, And for a sight steal out their heads? Heardst thou not music when she talked? And didst not find that as she walked She threw rare perfumes all about, Such as bean-blossoms newly out, Or chafèd spices give?— J.S. I must confess those perfumes, Tom, I did not smell; nor found that from Her passing by ought sprung up new. The flowers had all their birth from you; For I passed o’er the self-same walk And did not find one single stalk Of anything that was to bring This unknown after-after-spring. Thom. Dull and insensible, couldst see A thing so near a deity Move up and down, and feel no change? J.S. None, and so great, were alike strange; I had my thoughts, but not your way. All are not born, sir, to the bay. Alas! Tom, I am flesh and blood, And was consulting how I could In spite of masks and hoods descry The parts denied unto the eye. I was undoing all she wore, And had she walked but one turn more, Eve in her first state had not been More naked or more plainly seen. Thom. ’Twas well for thee she left the place; There is great danger in that face. But hadst thou viewed her leg and thigh, And upon that discovery Searched after parts that are more dear (As fancy seldom stops so near), No time or age had ever seen So lost a thing as thou hadst been.

I was working in a bookstore and as an antidote to the twin torment of exhaustion and boredom, one day I went with a friend on a walking tour. We made it as far as Berlin and there I met the man I would move with to a boarding house, then to furnished rooms in the flat of a civil servant, and from there one morning in January to the Registry to be married. Afterward we moved to a studio apartment and two years later to the school where boys returning from the war would remove their collars and sew them back on with red thread to demonstrate the end of their allegiance to the cruel and fastidious past. Everyone wanted to be launched into a place from which you could look back and ask whether the red was also meant to enact spilled blood. You could say so, but only if you want to insist that history's minutia is best read as allegory. The fact is, history didn't exist then. Each day was a twenty-four hour stand-still on a bridge from which we discretely looked into the distance, hoping to catch sight of the future. It's near where you're standing now. One day we were lying in the sun dressed in nothing but our skin when a camera came by and devoured us.