beauty is
what the man
alive and breathing,
sees as
feels as, knows
goes into him
as beauty
beauty is
a forked lightning
that gives light
and burns
beauty is
fire,
the fire
that gives warmth
that makes flesh warm,
diminishes
one of the beginning earth-
colds
a star
that is like a rock
burned and made whole in heat;
all turned into a thing
until it has nothing to feel with,
emotion
turned to stone that
yet burns
beauty is
the word
‘niger’ and ‘gringo’
canela
the way any man
bends the same way
to pick up a sack of beans
and carry the load six miles
over the mountains to where
he grows no beans
beauty is
a drink of water
when you’re thirsty
and it is
being poor
or lonely, or hungry, or without
—for nobody knows what it is
till then
real hard,
just the way
the cracked lightning
and the star
is