Close your eyes and the world opens

Calling a person ugly doesn’t make you any prettier,

Even your laughing audience will sense in themselves a fearful compassion for her…

What makes her ugly? And is the blame to her assigned?

She who missed the high gymnast’s beam of perfection,

The beam that has never known a single hand.

 

She ought to know better than to dress her head with her heart.

She ought to know better when to be careful and to stop.

She ought to know what makes her pretty,

And she ought to do those things.

Say they who know not a single reason for the look she brings.

 

Or that she saved another ugly girl,

By joining in her group.

That by making herself lowly,

She gave some ugly joy to a whole room.

 

A room full of ugly kids

With no reason to smile.

Could you ever hope to guess this by looking at her for awhile?

 

No.

So just listen.