I wonder if any of you know the parable of the three wise men
who go past a dead dog.
The first wise man says, "What a terrible sight that dead dog
is."
And the second wise man says, "What a terrible smell
that dead dog has."
But the third man, who's supposed to be wisest of all
says, "What beautiful white teeth that dead dog has."
And that's one way of looking at things.
But it's not the only way.
And this poem is called "Not Beautiful."
"In all Hiroshimas, in raw and raving voices,
live skeletons of the Camp, flies hugging feces, in war,
in famine, he'd find the beautiful.
Being saintly, his vocation was to find it at the dying
bedside, in the disrobing dead.
And what he did, they said, you should be trying.
Well, once, while dissecting a nerve in a cadaver
my cigarette dropped, fell into its abdomen.
I picked it up, I puffed out the smoke of hell.
Yet still was not fit for time to come--
the freehold grave, things run over
like slush all bloody and throbbing--
for though they were dumb, not beautiful, I said.
It's the parable again of the three wise men--
the first who, with finger and thumb, tweaked his nostrils,
and the second who pressed his eyes to his palms,
whilst the third, the wisest, cried, "Oh
what beautiful, white teeth have these vermin which died."
Homo sum, et cetera, but the third was divine, as they said.
One sees the good point, of course, and may admire it;
but, sometimes, I think that the curse is more sacred
than to pretend by affirming.
And offend.