Beauty is the Memory of the Flesh

We who left home, left before we knew it.
Taught not to go far, always travel light,
we learned that lightness takes us farther.
We changed our names then countries too.
We saw more to sight than met the eye.
Flying was such a dream, flying in a dream
like holding breath, taking roofs for runways,
clearing with a single bound jagged stands
of trees, warding off with airborne kicks
the suffocating snatch and grasp of others.
Nowhere is near, so not that far to go.
Language is just a way of putting things
but beauty is the memory of the flesh.
Now everywhere we go we want to stay.

*

One of my noumenal poems, lines which express thoughts as they are in themselves, as distinct from things knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.

This creates a certain tension between the poem itself and its title, which implies that that the flesh perceives and drives memory by seizing on beauty.  A bit more convolute than Keats’ famous dictum on truth and beauty.

But what if memories were already there?