*****

Recorded Reading (3:12): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pxbg83d2oymgay31uw7ic/What-Purpose-Beauty.mp3?rlkey=l83627p66nbf3o8o2czxr1ut8&dl=0

*****

What Purpose Beauty?

What purpose mere beauty?
Why should we take part
In such pointless exercise
As we call art?

Wherefore musicians,
Somehow have found
Funds for the instruments
They bring to sound,

Then sacrifice also
Youth’s vigorous powers
Practicing scales
For hours and hours?

Why should the dancer
Her whole childhood long
Have studied her body,
Choreographed song,

Burning the whole time
With zeal and with fire,
By thirty-five years to be
Forced to retire?

Where will she go then?
What will she be
Qualified for
Pecuniarily?

Should our writers struggle
All of their days
Come high and come low
To their readers amaze

With high inspiration,
Deep insight, or
Any other thing
Placed survival before?

Why should whole theater
Companies go
To all of the trouble
The rest of us know

They go to, for costumes,
For props and for sets,
Rehearsals — much trouble
As there ever gets —

Just to show us a slice
Of the drama and strife,
The love and the humor
In each our own life?

Things should be ugly!
Things should be plain!
Certainly nothing
From beauty we gain

Just think how much better
Off we would be
Without any such thing
As a melody

To which it cannot be
Any but good
That we’ll have no lyrics
In that neighborhood

Nothing decorated
No visual art
Instead should that artist
Be made to take part

In “gainful employment” ~
Building the wall
Of yet another
Empty shopping mall

To our strictly budgeted
Stark modern taste,
While letting the older ones
Crumble to waste

We shouldn’t have dancers
Moving around —
Those dancers should just
Put their feet on the ground

In some way which doesn’t
Make our women talk;
They should be content
Demurely to walk

As for all that writing
We’re all better off ~
When put to creative
Uses we scoff ~

Words are for warnings,
Translations elastic
Of that unique region’s
Texts ecclesiastic,

Instructional manuals,
Dry history
Are all for which they
Appropriate be

And that awful theater!
Don’t get me started
From it we all
Are much better parted

Which includes
In its purview
All those horrible
Movies, too

As well, of course,
Obviously,
As everything
On the TV…

When we wish
To relax
We’ll do this year’s
Income tax

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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