As Keats famously said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is all
ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
But Keats was a guy, and he was only 26 when he died. If he'd been
like me, a woman in her late 30's (I turn 38 this month! Ack!), I'm
not sure he would have phrased the sum of all human knowledge in
quite that way.
I'm not sure how I would phrase it, but I bet my version would be a
little less poetic.
I'm on poem number 8 (out of a thousand), and there's not a beauty in
the bunch. I seem to be in an ugly mood most of the time.
I keep feeling like I should write something pretty – like,
for instance, an ode to spring's blossoming trees, whose flower
petals fall and cover the sidewalks like exotic scented snowdrifts –
but that's not where the juice is right now.
What I actually want to write, what I find myself actually
writing, is self-indulgent crap about aging and anxiety, or pain and
purposelessness. For example, here are the last few lines of poem #7:
I inhabit / contingency, as if I were an old hotel / in a city
sinking into the sea, / with all the guests making love / in derelict
rooms / beneath my mossy chandeliers.
And that's as pretty as it gets, folks. I am seriously considering
writing a poem about the dead raccoon I saw a few months ago, the one
with the swarming face.
Maggots are the antithesis of poetry, right?
Hmmmm.
I'm reminded of a Japanese “death poem” by Kyoriku:
'Til now I
thought
that death
befell
the untalented
alone.
If those with
talent, too
must die
surely they
make
a better
manure?
