A Beauty

‘ I am moved by the fancies that are curled
  Around these images and cling:
  The notion of some infinitely gentle
  Infinitely suffering thing ‘
                  
                          - T. S. Elliot

I

The heart can go to and fro
This is what I know of love, not beauty,
For I loved in the grittiest of moments,
Tattered and beaten, hands soiled.
Beauty knows not of its own shadow;
It is one with itself, it is an illusion,
How it aspires to what we already know.

II

Borne in calamity, faced with obscurity;
Dirty ragamuffin draped in the worlds tag-ends,
I know your face, the dryness of your eyes unable
To cry, your histrionic stare.
Padding alone on dirty feet, their soles one with
The subterranean and its greasy, stifling air,
Its third rail.

And the dirty beds you lied on, how sombre
The sleep, how munificent the dreams as
The acrid taste of the evening was no longer a care,
I felt the beauty as it singed at my fingers like a
Biting cold, yet I knew it was there in all its
Pockmarked splendor, it was with a
Feverish glow.

III

The hollow cheeks of forgotten ones wrinkled
At the eyes from viewing the blinding light of
The worlds admiration and the pity of a wasted life.
And I know the worlds beauty when I see it in
The face of a stranger whose eyes dart and sink
And try to hide, as the hourly bell chimes.
We all try to find something beautiful to see and admire
In this world tied by only a reminder of passing time.

Unto which the world flicks a cigarette.



Inspired by these poems:

      ‘Preludes’
      ‘Rhapsody On a Windy Night
              
                           - By T. S. Elliot