FACE

Her soft lines over subtleties of bone
read like a script meaning itself alone;
we can add nothing but our own unrest.
	Perfection is at last
the death-mask of refusal to be more:
humanity as animal or flower,
    a face that cannot be undressed.

There is no more to say of it than "beauty",
than the dumb word.  Creation, journey, pity,
the powers behind speaking loveliness,
	starve on its shallow glass
- the shell that mirrors what it cannot hold.
There is nothing here that has been old;
    and we say "beauty" meaning "loss".