A Poem Against Visible Beauty

A few weeks ago I was joking on Xwitter that, “the poetry of nature is played out. Need more world-denying poets going into fits about the false beauty of all things visible and subject to change.”

Christian poets in general, even when critical of the excesses of the Romantics, often take seeing God through the beauty and order of nature as a standard subject. Fitting it may be, but no more so than its negation. Leaving aside true world-denying gnostics, our own John of the Cross warns us, “between spiritual things and all these bodily things there exists no kind of proportion whatever.”¹ There is no shortage of warnings about the dangers of the external senses and the imagination within entirely orthodox mysticism, but this typically does not make very good poetry. Even St John makes use of sensible imagery in his own poetry.

Writing a poem on the emptiness of the senses even in their apprehension of a beautiful world, and the process of turning to the interior apprehension of spiritual Beauty, seemed a worthy exercise. The discerning reader will note both the influence of Plotinus’ treatise on intellectual beauty, and perhaps the more remote influence of various Buddhist poets I read when I was young.

The spring is dim with gay bud and bloom.²
The bird song wakes our mutable racket.
But the mind is a mirror empty of light,
and unbirthable life is born again.

O din of beauty! Clamor of love!³
Petals soft of the dying world!
My eyes are not flesh, for I close them to blood.
They are closed to the light that shines through our skulls.

Have you seen the first innocent green,
the youthful face of our ancient dirt?
And have you seen the full-grown summer,
by life-giving light burning our life to toil?

The brown of death all too will say
is lovely when the fall freeze comes.
But the light of all is dark to those
who see by the light of an inner dark.

If a god would come as blazing gold,
still look not at the changing face,
for Beauty is not seen or heard,⁴
and the beautiful is not the Beauty we know.

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Let me know what you think of the poem, and have a great Memorial Day!

1. Ascent of Mt Carmel, Book 2 Ch XI

2. It is my DESTINY to reclaim gay as a word poets may use to mean cheerful and delightful.

3. Poets, please, do not be afraid to use ridiculous, antiquated techniques like this. The whole world cries out for you to wildly exclaim your ecstasy in a moment of uncontrollable inspiration!

4. Once again, poets, there’s nothing stopping you from bringing back this kind of Creative Capitalization. Don’t listen to your creative writing teachers, this kind of seemingly pointless anachronism will give you an air of True Nobility and elevate the minds of your readers.