We Never Notice Suffering
o
For Artie
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We never notice suffering when we see
Olympic diving. Beauty is the sole
Sweep that we watch, that we think of as free,
That leap more solemn than a cabriole,
More graceful, too, perhaps precisely since
The arc desires the downward flight, the threat
Implied in all descent. It must convince
That your lone death is not a pirouette
But drags you to a hero’s part. The keen
Collapse predicts an urge for amity
With loveliness and circumstances clean
Removed from stain before calamity.
00 He dives from heights, and though his skin sprouts hair
0000 We notice only sleekness in the air.
0
The firmness of his hair produced by gel
Cannot impose more tautness on our world,
No more than rigidnesses of the fell
Exigencies we can’t escape, those curled
More closely than his cutesome, dark hair wave
That peaks so pertly there above his brain.
Our urgent breathings fall into the grave.
They are the architrave of joy and pain,
No matter how Olympian or pale
Our actions, and no matter what the style
We bring to bear. This teenage boy can’t fail
To understand that fate waits to defile
A famous love, a father’s devotion.
O! let the lad dive, despite the ocean!
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He’s not allowed to wear a metal skin
Of armor or a helmet with a crest
To offer hard protection. Death and sin
Are far outside the meaning of that breast
And certainly outside the camera frame
That captures plummeting. The handsome swoop
That throws itself in curvingness to fame
Is saved for us in sheened slow motion loop
Of digital triumphant moment for
The instant replay taken for granted.
It promises a deathlessness before
The dive is even finished, deep-planted
In chlorinated water. Aqua pool
And skin live on in spun electric spool.