Thomas Pfau

WHAT IS BEAUTY

In memoriam Christopher Logue

She says some say it’s tank lines grinding across Ukraine

she says some say it’s a carrier strike group maneuvering a Pacific strait

an Iliad of aircraft

some say it’s sudden wind rifling an autumn lake

some say windswept lavender fields some say mortgaged fields

some say the brainwork busy rustle of a poet

nouns imitating apple trees

hold the most beauty on this black earth

she says she says it’s whoever whatever whichever attracts

she says this is too easy to explicate

as maelstrom-eyed Helen abandoned husband home children a parent

her beauty for another beauty

but what is beauty

she says she says it’s whoever whatever whichever attracts

nothing attracts me

after Sappho

THOMAS PFAU holds degrees in Classics and in English. His poems and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry, Pontoon, Salamander, and Southwest Review. He lives in Cedar City, Utah, and teaches English at Southern Utah University.