Beauty was the messy, nutritious, disintegrating
Afterbirth of death. So, yes, Wallace, death
Was the mother of beauty, but beauty was not death’s
Daughter. Striving and the awareness of striving
Were among her daughters. Beauty helped.
Beauty nourished, orchestrated, communicated
Between mother death and each new offspring.
When death was weak and hungry, beauty
Even nourished her, helped death make more milk
To keep her daughters, all of us, growing, eager. Nor
Do all her lovely metaphors, consumed or functioning,
Belong only to the conceits of mammals such as us.
Death has other descendants, other vines
Entangling each other, beauty as byproduct,
The flowers that color their means without end.
The capacity to climb, to clamber over each other,
To cooperate and coordinate to find the light
And cover over each other, these are her daughters.
Clinging, parasitic radicants blossom the lissomest,
Loveliest forms of deconstruction, but we ascend
As hunger, not to make our meals, each other, prettier.
No comments:
Post a Comment