The beautiful face is like other beautiful faces,
The beautiful iconic look other faces share,
A beauty instantly recognized which the knowing cartoonist traces,
But her face compares to nothing—some similarity is there
To other beautiful faces,
But her face violates the template lovers see;
Her face, by the normal measure, should be ugly.
But it isn’t. And those who meet her more than once,
And get over that first illusion
Of the awkward and the ugly, gradually reach a different conclusion.
Her face is like the Christ, a difference the gift of God.
I, too, thought her face was strong, but odd,
A chin too prominent by the architect’s hand,
A beauty even beauty could never understand,
Not beautiful because it was her—
No personality shining through—
But a timeless architecture, imperious and pure,
A beauty not really for love—but belonging more to awe,
A face in an opium dream of lust, no cartoonist could draw.
Her face is the template of a beauty yet to be,
And not only did I succumb,
Her face succumbed to me,
And even now I am dumb
And cannot speak; wit does not belong to eternity.