Them mills now roll double time as each incident explodes into the public’s imagination. We, too, are distant from the dilemma yet the horrible grips us. Such are these hands of truth, which, by the time we have reached our respective terminals, we have consumed like french fries. The poet wanted a place for the genuine yet the body of the real is trafficked like ghosts from nowheretown. Do we despair this escalating hopelessness? Or seek out a language that would help us forget? How would we write of beauty then?

It is, of course, all hypothesis lacking spirit, considering that the case for that which is beautiful need not be written at all. It needs to be enacted, or the vision of it at least, so said another poet. Yet how do we exactly proceed when the machines of war bring mutilated bodies into our doorstep, when the forests and villages outside our window are burning? Let us take a line then and consider the alternative:

I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 

That which is true lies at the heart of time itself and its passing. That which is truly beautiful will, in time, be mourned. The sea coasts are lovely this time of the year. Would you like to swim? Of course we would after the child is brought to nursery and when the orchids at last have bloomed. Meantime let us dazzle ourselves in the realm of the fragment? Write this:

The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,  
Sings by himself a song.  
  
Song of the bleeding throat!  
Death’s outlet song of life—(for well, dear brother, I know  
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would’st surely die.)

It is not so much the distinctions that matter. Nor is the subject matter. Mere singing, too, is not enough. Burn, too, must we, the forests and villages. In our pages must lie their “silent wreckage”. In time, spring, like a lost dove, shall return. That which is inevitable is most beautiful.