it has long been rumored
there was a night, that night
when Juliek, on brink of death
played Beethoven so hauntingly
in the dark for dying men, starved,
doomed to meet dark doom so soon
but regaled in that lurking dark
with beauty’s fire unquenchable…I heard he played his violin
as if his very life was song
and offered as sacred lament
for each life draining there,
for each life straining there
on every holy note eternal,
every sacred note, sublime…

I heard the guards were sullen
and secretly afraid,
I heard they occupied that purgatory place
between beauty and brokenness
untouched by either one
and thus forever damned
until time finally ends…But some of them were haunted
then, always ever after
by beauty’s power to stop them
from ever being blind again
to human hearts and faces
to human agony,
to God’s beauty unstoppable
and to the aching horror of
the absence of plain beauty…

That common ache within us?
that longing inexplicable,
seemingly accidental
seemingly mere abstraction
but pregnant hot inside us
for such great transformation
that we can rest assured forever
that beauty is not accidental
beauty is not random,

but Divinely Transcendent
Transcendent and Eternal
Oh Beauty, Haunting Beauty.