A Fatal Beauty

Aug 1 2011


Obscenity, beauty, art

are not fixed.

They exist

in the eye of the beholder.

“I know it when I see it”*

you huff, dismissively,

the arbiter of boundary, and taste.

But some engineer, somewhere

 —  a squat rumpled man

with an ink-stained pocked, stubby hands

armed with calipers, and adjusted light  —

has reduced beauty

to numbers.

The clarity of skin.

The width of her lips.

The distance

between Mona Lisa eyes.

The science of beauty

deals in absolutes.

A beautiful woman goes through life

with her own peculiar burden.

That she will be judged

and dismissed

as just a pretty face.

That she will struggle with trust  —

by women, who are envious,

and men, who want an ornament

to make their rivals lust.

And that beauty always ends;

and then, with what will she be left?

I think my destiny was set

at birth  —

the way temperament

emerges from the womb

fully formed.  

So reborn a million times over
I would make the same mistakes.

But if character is fate

then beauty can be fatal.

Because this beautiful woman

we wish to be, or wish for,

feels as flawed, and insecure

as her plain invisible sister.

She will live fast, and hard

and die far too young,

in the arms of a lover, an expensive car,

with the needle, fully plunged.

At least, that way

beauty does not fade.

She will be forever young,

unburdened by age

and disappointment.

Beautiful people

are not like you or me.

We feel entitled

to nothing.

While all they seek from the world

is trust  —

to be loved

for the beauty

too few ever notice.

*A famous quote from U.S.  jurist Potter Stewart, over the definition of the word  in a landmark obscenity trial.

I managed to begin with the word “obscenity”:  a shameless attention-getter, if nothing else!

This poem came about as the confluence of several streams.  The most immediate current was a brief review of a recently released book entitled The Fatal Gift of Beauty.

Other than that, I’ve written recently about the Mona Lisa, as well as about the definition of art.

I heard some blowhards self-righteously pontificating on obscenity.

I’ve been reading about facial recognition software, as well as the quantification of beauty by symmetry and proportion.

Some time ago, I wrote a beautiful woman with these ideas about the burden of beauty; but never managed to include this in a poem.

As well, I’ve often reflected on the pronouncement that “character is destiny” (attributed to Heroclitus, a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BC):  not that I believe in predestination, or in any kind of supernatural fate; but I do believe in the power of the accident of birth — a kind of biological determinism, if you will.

And finally, another pretty young rock star died at the age of 27 (an age that, in rock star deaths, seems to have assumed mystic proportions). In retrospect, her end seems to have been inevitable. And so, as the iconic lyrics have it, “she will be forever young”.  A kind of consolation, perhaps.

In the end, the poem becomes a bit precious:  inner beauty, and all that. But what the hell. Because it really can be hard to see, when you’re blinded by the outer kind. or basking in its reflected glory.