Helen Are You O of My Heart
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Poet’s Note: Beauty used to benumb beholders. Today’s beauty is simply numbered and indexed. One thousand (mille-Helens) make one Helen, the unit fashioned after Helen of Troy believed to be the most beauteous ever to have walked on this globe. (Why not? Western standards only today matter). In the octave of this sonnet, a husband talks about what beauty is. In the sestet the lady wants to know what he thinks about her beauty, and then Volta happens to resolve in a political answer.
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Superficial, shallow, only skin deep,
Beauty, as beauty buffs may bemoan, lies
In a beholder's discreet pair of eyes,
Doubt if from a shallow skin can it peep.
It has to glow and gleam from deep within
To emanate from holder's feeling heart,
And seldom a thing of the visual art,
Born of one’s heart, beauty's more felt than seen.
Fine, fine, but how many Helens you think
You give to me, hailing from head or heart?
Beholders of beauty when think, they blink,
And since it spills over from every quart,
I doubt if Helens is a fair measure
For you— my heart’s Helen, my sole pleasure.
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Sonnets | 04.02.2008, revised Sept 2022|
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