Rhett Talley: ‘On Beauty’

On Beauty

What of the eye
Whose primeval blade
Cuts a hard swathe
And cannot look away?
Or the archaic Attic arm
That gave it dimension, form, immortality?
Is every stone therefore vulnerable?
In the mind the form so fixed
The base block cannot conceal it?
The eye feasts, commands the lust,
Demands we get the trust,
Meld the flesh until it blooms.
Desire gorges on the symmetry
Leaves its ancient mark along the swollen belly.
The eye rejoices at the linear blood.
Look: the new thing emerges
Fatted on its shadow.

Rhett Talley