Dark Beauty

All men strive for beauty through definition As women strive for definition through their beauty; In women’s forms and faces Men see it and applaud it, How lips that are not quite right Must be reshaped and eyebrows Vague or thickly pagan, Must be smoothed and plucked, Arrayed another way. For whom do they perform This ritual of realization, Groping through the paint and powder To recall a dream of youth that's lost? Who has this turgid power? And what, what the cost? Come, my lovely, And give definition to your grace; Dispel the years and the toil and tears And show me your young face. Darling, dance your heart for me In elegant curls and lace, While I am drawn in gloom and storm, The master of a sterner race. Come play for me And make the music sleek; My tarnished voice must yet Through mere human methods speak, But your voice is clear and fair, Rising to a pitch I cannot dare. And God your fit and youngish skin! Alive and soft and curved! But I must figure the angles, Plot the sins, find enemies to conquer Even if among your auburn hairs. You see, my heart is bare. Where beauty must be sought so, Threadbare kings will ever entice some Naked innocent to dress and paint and preen, Implore infected girls to mirror What queens should never deem: To forge a definition of, To freeze in time a picture of, To faint and feint an adoration of Dear beauty, dire beauty, dark beauty, For which I strive, From which I fall. rcs. 4th draft: 10/22/02 ©1984 Ronald C. Southern