I wrote this article a while back when I was reviewing poetry, and recently I have been thinking about how language plays a part in my life, and how important it really is to me. This is one of the entries I was really proud to have written in terms of sheer context, and I still think it applies today.
Last week as I was walking around campus I noticed a lovely tree growing right by the small fountains. Although I am certain it is a type of maple tree, what really caught my attention was the beautiful speckled bark. The tree was at the stage where the old bark was peeling away to showcase smooth grey-ish wood dappled with various shades of brown.
It was truly a sight to see, and it reminded me so much of an old chocolate vendor who used to sell a variety of chocolates by my grandmother’s house back in India. She had vitiliginous skin, and my grandmother always told me to view her skin with as much grace as I viewed the chocolates she sold. When I sent this recount to a person very dear to me, I was sent a poem in response titled, “Pied Beauty,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Needless to say, I fell as in love with the poem as I did the maple tree, and with each line, it was evident to me that beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder, but sometimes the beholder misses out on some important details, and that is when the poet becomes their eyes.
The poem begins with the line, “Glory be to God for dappled things,” and it was with that same glory that I viewed the tree as a creation. What I love the most about this poem, however, is that not only is the imagery so vivid, but it is almost as if Hopkins hands us a paint brush and guides us through his poem in specific techniques.
The words such as, “stipple,” “plotted,” and “freckled,” give such beautiful little nuances to the images he describes. As if the beauty of these glorious, dappled, beings and objects begins at the very moment an invading color marks the original, like the first drop of paint into a clear cup of water. At the end of the poem, Hopkins writes, “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change,” a line that resonated deep within the chambers of my heart because the beauty he describes is like the beauty of my tree.
A beauty witnessed through the changing of the past, a beauty that is witnessed in limbo between what it was and what it becomes.
