nameabledays Archive One

Durer's Horsemen, the Apocalypse of Beauty


Sometimes beauty insists
So much upon us we feel
All around us proves its absence

Like the way we convince
Ourselves we are worth
The belief of others

And we babble like idiots
Thinking all who listen
To us are as idiotic

O we bleed in the ears
Our life of the mind
Insulted assassinated

By those who want
To lead us. Our griefs
Are as hard as stone

As deadly as lahar
Sliding down the slopes
Of a volcano

So beloved for its beauty.
So where is it then
In this desert and muck

Of ugliness? Do we find it
For instance in duty
Dictated by fealty

Slavish unthinking
Mindless instinct, the urge
Of hunger and poverty?

For our belief is molded
By idiots sired by the ancestry
Of greed, the breed

That feeds and perpetuates us.
Such is the beauty of our
Lot, we are inured to it.

That other beauty
The beauty of the opposite
The antimatter of beauty

Which, in showing us
What we can be, might
Save us, is what eludes us.


Marne L. Kilates
April 17, 2007

(Mint-fresh, just for sharing, before it changes into something else. In the meantime, it's for everybody.)