The Truth of Beauty

Hello my friends, my readers! Today’s poem is on ‘Beauty’. A poet called Keats once wrote ,’ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’, as well as the lines ‘ Beauty is truth , truth beauty’. But what does this ‘beauty’ mean to anyone? It is a quality which is subjective. It’s the same as the way in which we pick the best mangoes, that is, we go for color, skin, smell, texture, shape, weight, and still, we can go wrong! Not sweet enough! Well that’s just Gods, way of telling us ‘It is what is in the inside that counts, dear human!’

 Superficially anyone (male, females, and animals) and anything can be beautiful, but Beautiful is what Beautiful does! A batsman can hit a ‘beautiful shot’, a surgeon can do a ‘beautiful surgery’, an average person can do a ‘beautiful deed’, and nature is always beautiful!

We are being sold to beauty, these days! Colors are flashed before us and we are hooked on to what looks good and feels good. The worst place is in the ‘Marriage Market in India’, I was ‘in’ it a few years ago and believe me it’s even tougher than winning a beauty pageant! And yes, most of the times women she/he themselves are the culprits! You hear things like, ‘she is too short, ’He/ She is too tall!’, She/he is not fair, He/she  wears  glasses, He/ She has very less/ too much hair, She/he weighs –Options : too, much, too less,  is too ‘flat’, too ‘beefed up’, too ‘Big’! …….  Help! I think horses have it easier!

Hence the poem below was written, with all of the above in mind. So have a read, grab a cup of lovely ‘black’ coffee, and tell me if the poem was ‘Beautiful’!  Enjoy!

The Truth of Beauty

Some have everything,

Except a lovely face,

No twinkling sea blue eyes,

Or a nose of royal grace,

No ruby lips like strawberry or rose,

or silky smooth soft hair.

No soft skin that glows,

No hands like petal leaves closed,

Or the voice of a nightingale.

But lovely things come with wicked traits,

Stars can fall in the sky,

The sea can gray in spate,

Royalty has its own downturns,

And strawberries can cause rashes on the face,

Roses have their thorns,

For rubies people have killed and lied,

Silk can cut marble and skin,

The nightingale is dark, dark as the black night

Like a book that needs to be read,

Sweet like chewing wheat bread,

A wine to be tasted and enjoyed,

Beautiful like a carpet,

With all its knots cut and tied,

If looks could kill then some can save several lives!

The mirror never lies, but

Beauty is in the beholders eyes,

Is the opinion of the one who is wise.

If you wish to read more on Keats poems from which I have quoted kindly see the following links:

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/463/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn

Wikipedia also does a good analysis on ‘Beauty and the philosophy about it you can do a search on the site. Gandhi too spoke about Beauty and Truth, if anyone is interested kindly see the link below:

http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/philosophy_truth_truthnbeauty.htm

Also have a look at what Monalisa the Cow is up to in her next adventure in my Blog of Short Stories!

This post was written for a competition for IndiBlogger , Yahoo! India - Dove contest "What does real beauty mean to you?" Do check this link out to know more - http://realbeauty.yahoo.com/