On the sitting room wall when I was a child
Was a reproduction of the Vermeer
'The Girl with the Pearl Earring'- by then
Not popularised in film and novel.
She stared at me sadly, reproachfully
In my mother's absence. Her eyes followed
Everywhere- the substitute enforcer.
Conventional beauty for me became
An agency of control. Socrates'
Goal: 'The good, the true and the beautiful'
Was perverted into the control speak
Of that lovely tyrant. You must be good
And true. My perfection insists on it.
My unwitting rejection came when
My mother asked to take a photo
Of a roofless, dilapidated wreck
Of a house in our area to support
Her demand for complete demolition.
The returning prints brought exasperation.
'You have made it look beautiful' she moaned.
Of course I had. Beauty for me was not
Aristotelian symetry but
Anarchy and chaos. And the freedom
To see as beautiful what others saw
As ugly.
Martin McLean
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-for-me-a-beautiful-woman/
