Another Swerve On Modesty, Privacy and Morality

i.

There is supposed to be a measure of duty in beauty
And a measure of beauty in duty
Spreading that rug over inlaid parquet.

Persian knotwork should not hide any flaws
But it must cover engendering nakedness, though—
Silencing footfalls that are

Not less brutal
The inlayer’s art now a sample of truth
For the eyes of absent gods.

Oh, come ye invaders and yank her
Out of a loller’s world on top of marquetry:
Denuded, beauty will render her duty.


ii.

An ill-kempt burglar breaking into
A well-kept abode—shouldn’t he
Be all dazzled by calm beauty?

What he foresaw
Did not expect him, does
Disturbance blind the mind in a way

That empowers to wrest
Treasures elsewhere badly misplaced?
Yet there might be some fight in some chest.


iii.

Beauty shopping chadored
Later on, in some dark, turns raw duty
At the hands of an unchosen proxy of heavenly powers.

We don’t chose our parents either, do we, hypostasis is
The one pedagogic unveiling, divine beauty
Only absent eyes glom on to.


April 9, 2013