Years ago, when I was rotten with virtue,
I believed loveliness
was just a face, a flower,
no underside to it, no dark complication.
Sometime later
I was sure it couldn’t be more than this:
a group of us singing “We Shall Overcome,”
hands joined, 1968,
the double elixir of anger and conviction
making us gravely intimate.
But I’ve felt
the loveliness of a fine moment
passing into the moment that follows,
I’ve read books
that slowed down a life
long enough for me to enter it, a life
so dangerous
and short I’ve wanted to rage
at all the postponements in mine,
all the dead
unforgivably correct afternoons. …
Last year in a room where survivors
were gathered,
all, except one man, were telling
why they’d never be the same.
I watched
his obstinate calm when it was his turn
to thank God, the loveliness of how he kept
what was his his,
while the flashbulbs burst around him.
Now I want to witness and be part
of everyone impoverished
rising awkwardly out of their histories,
and I want to believe in the value
of a face, too,
the simplest thing and its shadow,
the power of loveliness to elevate
and to sadden.
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