*****

Recorded Reading (2:18): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1w6n0edmltg1syaqyrc09/Evanescence.mp3?rlkey=ytvwpt2kipw6uw9euw8iewqmu&dl=0

*****

Evanescence

At one time we wore farthingales
Encased the body in a cage
Before that, shaving lovely women’s
Foreheads was the coming rage

Though not in Melanesia, where
Small beady eyes and foreheads low
Characterized the finest girls
With whom a happy boy could go

There was a not so long past day
When even to her shoulder bare
Was more than any decent girl
Or upright woman ever dare

While, in the Orient, no man
Had e’en a well-clothed shoulder seen ~
Women of wealth and standing
Forever hid behind a screen

Though something never done today,
A mere two hundred years ago
The most respectable of men
In powdered curly wigs would go…

Now these, and all expressions
Of our diverse humanity,
Accessible to us in our
Collective mem’ry be

Which, if we wish to utilize
In practice or in play,
Are available to us
In every present day

So grieve not too much if the times
Priorities will rearrange
‘Tis only on the surface
That appearances seem strange

Whilst underneath the outward
Ever-shifting sands of such
Manifest eternally same
Timeless universal touch

Mannerism alters not
This intent or that:
Only the fullness of the sleeve
Only the tilt of hat

Only the style of architecture
Only the accent on the name —
The smile, the nod, the sweeping gesture
All of these remain the same

So do not the cessation
Of eternal change demand
Times can’t alter true relation ~
We have them all at our command

*****

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

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