BEAUTY BARE

for Angelo Bucarelli

 

 

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

—EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

 

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool.

—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

 

 

 

We are not in Troy
but still a man
with three daughters
may have much trouble
from fools
and a woman who bears
three daughters is a heroine
in my book
even though
I am not Homer—
and even though Homer
had little use for heroines, who were not witches.

 

. . .

 

Nina, Angelo,
this new beauty
you have made—
this beauty bare—
affirms life
in the midst of death—
affirms your Vita Nuova—
also mine.

 

The middle of three daughters,
the joker in the pack,
the meat in the sandwich,
I know the gravity
of what you’ve done.

 

For what fairy-tale king and queen
do not have
three daughters?
And what are daughters for
but to drag their parents
kicking and screaming
out of fairyland?

 

But here comes Helena-Sirai
with her fierce desire to live,
her fists beating,
her tender feet kicking the air
until it eddies about her,
altering everything.

 

. . .

 

Suddenly Cosima becomes
the eldest of three Graces
painted by Botticelli,
Springtime’s summoner,
ringleader of the muses.

 

And Palma becomes herself,
only more so—in the middle,
winning her place with wit.
(Sometimes the one
whose place is least assured
strives hardest to be heard.)

 

What will the world be like
when these three do their dance?
May we be there
to witness it!

 

A glow of Eden suffuses
your three blond beauties.
Oh, may they return us to
the Golden Age—
Cosima, Palma, Sirai—
may they dance us back
on their thirty pink toes
to the garden we left
so long ago.