ONE DEFENSE

In Memoriam
Walton Ellis Mangum

                    Knowing how the desire for love

                    deceives us, passing for love itself,

                    I offer, if I need one,
                    one defense: 

                    Beauty calls for embodiment
                    as music in a man’s mind
                    demands to be heard, being
                    another mode of being,
                    and, in the hearing,
                    another consciousness
                    that we exist. 

                    So beauty, sculpted form in space,
                    or act, or word, 
                    exists to be embraced, to be
                    become— 

                    Or else,

                    O solitary figures of perfection, 
                    moving across our lives 
                    like secret messengers,

                    How the desire for love 
                    can fool us!  Then
                    (and this is my defense)
                    we go around in circles, blind
                    eyes turned inward.



Top image from http://academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com/2010_10_17_archive.html 

Middle image from http://deadlifts-and-derrida.tumblr.com/post/138286751995/beauty

Bottom image from http://tcaperton.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html