The Death Of Beauty

How can beauty be killed?

Melt the ice caps;

Beauties that we've known and loved

will die.

Polar bears will swim to exhaustion,

their cubs will starve.

A beautiful creature is dying,

but is beauty dead?

Poach ivory from elephants until

there are no more elephants.

A great and profound beauty is dying.

I feel its death throes in my body, but still

I doubt that beauty is dead.

There is no end of beauty.  Perhaps

when a small piece of beauty is murdered,

it diminishes those of us who live in this time,

for we are accomplice to the crime.

I don't see myself as a beauty killer.

I see myself as a beauty maker.

But I can't stop the tides that are rising,

the beaches that are drowning,

the skies that are fading.

We killed beauty for comfort.  I did.

You did.  I bought into the con

until I saw the contempt in the con.

When I saw the con, I stomped on it like a poisoned artifact.

Beauty killer!  Murderer!  Earth hater!

Is beauty dead?  It can't be.

The desolate tide flats where bones show in the mud,

where mangled soldiers lie, where steel and gunpowder

show their leavings.  That's what I see, but that isn't all

there is to see.  Beauty still lives.  Beauty is immortal.

We  may kill ourselves with the lies

we have lived.  We may go the way of the whale and the polar bear.

swimming until we're exhausted.

Beauty may be wounded, convalescing, emaciated, ravaged,

but with or without us

beauty will return.