Decaying Beauty

• Anagha Gupta, Grade 10, Good News Lutheran College P-12
• Poetry
• 2022

Excellence Award in the 'Unleashed 2022' competition

Our eyes that seek beauteous and bewitching fragility in all,
fail to award and assign beauty to world's most mundane things.
Blinded by such an intoxicating desire for extravagance and frill,
they refuse to regard the ordinary presents of life's finest exhibitions.
Oh, how the eye is oblivious to the star that relinquishes the warmth of day,
to drip a lustrous glow in the colds of night -
the star that seeks nothing more than its lover's attention and crave.
But how foolish this forsaken gem must be to seek false glory from a mortal,
who chooses to indulge in the awes of its creation of light instead?
Oh, how blind must the blues of our prudent eyes be,
to overlook even the river who weeps lonely.
Who buries each obstacle in its wake beneath its flowing gown,
desperate, to at last be recognized and admired.
How must it become possible for beauty to dwell in the eyes of any beholder,
when our eyes lay distracted by the fabricated allure of a contoured world.
When our eyes seek to praise only the extraordinary, and disregard the rest?