Today I found beauty in depression, in the pre-Raphaelite art of tragic characters. It is not my intention to romanticize self-harm, but rather see the beauty that lies even in the darkest of outlooks. I find, for me, that gives my depression value, and me a boost of confidence in the expression.

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Poem prompt: “Today’s daily resource is the online collection of the Harvard Art Museums, where you can find this bright and pretty drawing of a tulip poplar, a rather forbidding poster comparing various causes of death in Wisconsin, this beautiful jade paperweight, and much more.

And now for today’s optional prompt. W.H. Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts‘ takes its inspiration from a very particular painting: Breughel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.’ Today we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that describes a detail in a  painting, and that begins, like Auden’s poem, with a grand, declarative statement.”

Sorrow's Beauty

There is beauty in the sorrow of finality, 
of one so desperate for peace they feel 
breathing must cease to balm over pain, 
but this beauty is seen only by the beholder. 

Millais beheld Ophelia's unrequited longing, 
desperate desire lingering in her eyes 
as her dress ballooned in the bucolic stream 
and her hands lifted still to praise Heaven. 
All she saw was a blue sky dimming gray, 
gray dimming black, 
black dimming insensate. 

Waterhouse beheld Elaine's determination 
to be free at any cost, her hand caught in the act 
of letting the lock loose, the chains go, even knowing 
relief would be as fleeting as the windowless clouds 
drifting above her auburn hair,  
drifting the current to Camelot,  
drifting past oblivious Lancelot. 

The beauty lies in these women alive 
in their final acts of choice, 
in taking their lives into their own hands. 
The sorrow lies in a slowing heart 
at only one choice believed remaining, 
in the deep darkness of unconscious ground.