52 Beauty poems

With her hair closely cropped up to the nape Like Dorian Apollo’s, the girl lay on the narrow Pallet, keeping her limbs stiffly frozen Within a heavy cloud she could not escape... Artemis emptied her quiver—every arrow Shot through her body. And though very soon She’d be no virgin, like cold honeycomb, Her virgin thighs still kept her pleasure sealed... As if to the arena, the youth came Oiled with myrrh, and like a wrestler kneeled To pin her down; and although he broke past Her arms that she had thrust against his chest, Only much later, with one cry, face to face, Did they join lips, and out of their sweat, embrace...

There’s blue, and then there’s blue. A number, not a hue, this blue is not the undertone of any one but there it is, primary. I held the bouquet in shock and cut the stems at a deadly angle. I opened the toxic sachet of flower food with my canine and rinsed my mouth. I used to wash my hands and daydream. I dreamed of myself and washed my hands of everything. Easy math. Now I can’t get their procedure at the florist off my mind. The white flowers arrived! They overnighted in a chemical bath and now they have a fake laugh that catches like a match that starts the kind of kitchen fire that is fanned by water. They won’t even look at me. Happy Anniversary.

Chandelier too full of brilliance to be indolent. Your prisms enunciate the light and don’t need rain to break it into rainbows. Snow with six crutches in each crystal. Your livery your glitter, your purring made visible. Only inanimate things can sparkle without sweat. My spinet, the threat of music in its depths and miniature busts of men composers carved of time on top. The hollow bench held sheet music. Sing me Charm Gets In Your Eyes. I hear you best when undistracted by your body. In headspace technology, where flowers are living in glass globes, their fragrance vivisected. Anything that blooms that long will seem inanimate. Heaven. Grief like the sea. Keeps going. Over the same wrought ground. The whole spent moan. Praise dies in my throat or in the spooky rift between itself and its intended. Like a wish- bone breaking. The little crutch inside is not a toy. There is no night asylum. A restless bed, a haunt preserve, a blanket rough as sailcloth. But sing me, was it kind snow sometimes? With true divided lights and nothing flawed about it? If song goes wrong, be dancerly. Dance me, at what point does west turn to east as it spins? I’ve never understood. Perspective. How charm gets to yes. Dance me Exile and the Queendom, by request. It is a ferocious thing to have your body as your instrument. Glove over glove, let your dance express what I’ve been creeping like a vein of sweat through a vastness of. This tune with mountains tied inside and many silent letters can be read as trackers scan the spaces between toes and birders read the rustle left by birds. As any mammal in its private purr hole knows, the little crutch inside is not a crutch. More a sort of steeple. Neither silver to be chased nor gold to be beaten. You were==you are more than ever like that too. Noon upon noon, you customize this solitude with spires that want nothing from me and rise with no objective as everything does when happy.

Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And for your spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be.

By the time I recalled that it is also terrifying, we had gone too far into the charmed woods to return. It was then the beautiful animal appeared in our path: ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving from me to you and back. If we show none of the fear, it may tire of waiting for the triggering flight, it may ask only to lie between us and sleep, fur warm on our skin, breath sweet on our necks as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream alternately of feeding and taming it and of being the first to run. The woods close tight around us, lying nested here like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see who wakes first, and from which dream.

All dreams of the soul End in a beautiful man’s or woman’s body. —Yeats, “The Phases of the Moon” Whenever we wake, still joined, enraptured— at the window, each clear night’s finish the black pulse of dominoes dropping to land; whenever we embrace, haunted, upwelling, I know a reunion is taking place— Hear me when I say our love’s not meant to be an opiate; helpmate, you are the reachable mirror that dares me to risk the caravan back to the apogee, the longed-for arms of the Beloved— Dusks of paperwhites, dusks of jasmine, intimate beyond belief beautiful Signor no dread of nakedness beautiful Signor my long ship, my opulence, my garland beautiful Signor extinguishing the beggar’s tin, the wind of longing beautiful Signor laving the ruined country, the heart wedded to war beautiful Signor the kiln-blaze in my body, the turning heaven beautiful Signor you cover me with pollen beautiful Signor into your sweet mouth—

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round an oxter or early man in the cave mouth watching rain-drifts pour from beyond his understanding. Whether to admire the mere sensation, enough, or hold out for sweeter ornament, vessels of wonder born with that ur-charm of symmetry; lovely ones we ache to prize and praise, climb into and become because they try our day-by-day significance: some of us ugly and most of us plain, walked past in the drowned streets: pearls of paste, salted butter, secondary colors. They drift unapproached, gazed never-selves, blunt paragons of genetic industry. We desire them but cannot want such order. We stand, mouths open, and cannot help stammering our secrets, nailed to water.

Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from the mountains across, although the day was harsh and tomorrow foreign. But, when it darkened well and out came the priest’s hand over the little garden of the dead, She Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night—the blowing rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns— at sea’s entry, wakeful Otherly beauty! Only the waves’ words half-guessed or in a rustle, and others resembling the dead’s that startle in the cypress, strange zodiacs that lit up her magnetic moon-turned head. And one Unbelievable cleanliness allowed, to great depth in her, the real landscape to be seen, Where, near the river, the dark ones fought against the Angel, exactly showing how she’s born, Beauty Or what we otherwise call tear. And long as her thinking lasted, you could feel it overflow the glowing sight bitterly in the eyes and the huge, like an ancient prostitute’s, cheekbones Stretched to the extreme points of the Large Dog and of the Virgin. “Far from the pestilential city I dreamed of her deserted place where a tear may have no meaning and the only light be from the flame that ravishes all that for me exists. “Shoulder-to-shoulder under what will be, sworn to extreme silence and the co-ruling of the stars, “As if I didn’t know yet, the illiterate, that there exactly, in extreme silence are the most repellent thuds “And that, since it became unbearable inside a man’s chest, solitude dispersed and seeded stars!”

Think Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” Belle as beast Eel as style Bats testy Best lastly Bluely astute — as bull as beetle as Bey as butte Beauty as lute thus beauty as lush Late lethal Lust salty She’ll eye She’ll tally Yes stately yet stealth Yes steely yet sly Hey lathe — [she taut] Hey sleuth — [she tale] He heel He that She bluesy She ballsy She byte She shall

Now like the Lady of Shalott, I dwell within an empty room, And through the day and through the night I sit before an ancient loom. And like the Lady of Shalott I look into a mirror wide, Where shadows come, and shadows go, And ply my shuttle as they glide. Not as she wove the yellow wool, Ulysses’ wife, Penelope; By day a queen among her maids, But in the night a woman, she, Who, creeping from her lonely couch, Unraveled all the slender woof; Or, with a torch, she climbed the towers, To fire the fagots on the roof! But weaving with a steady hand The shadows, whether false or true, I put aside a doubt which asks ‘Among these phantoms what are you?’ For not with altar, tomb, or urn, Or long-haired Greek with hollow shield, Or dark-prowed ship with banks of oars, Or banquet in the tented field; Or Norman knight in armor clad, Waiting a foe where four roads meet; Or hawk and hound in bosky dell, Where dame and page in secret greet; Or rose and lily, bud and flower, My web is broidered. Nothing bright Is woven here: the shadows grow Still darker in the mirror’s light! And as my web grows darker too, Accursed seems this empty room; For still I must forever weave These phantoms by this ancient loom.