Lamentation for the Face

Because of smiles that often play

Upon your lively face

And frowns, and what they have to say,

Expressions I can trace

That now are hidden ear to ear

With varied kinds of threads,

Of colors or with patterned cheer,

Or blacks or blues or reds,

I’m still disheartened when I glance

At you in this disguise

Because it hides your countenance

And so affronts my eyes.

Yet here I sadly must confess

I wear one when I must

But still and only, nonetheless

In utter self-disgust!

How long, alas, must we abide

This sad, grotesque charade

That masquerades, I shan’t deny,

A pitiful parade?

To say the least, I hesitate

To think that this must be,

To save from some sorry fate,

Some new necessity.

But more than that do I abhor

The sad attempt to claim

That this could yet be something more,

Some new designer’s aim.

How lovely, how desirable

This mask, you’d have me think,

Could be if just perhaps I will

Accept it and its ink,

Coordinated with the clothes

You chose to wear today,

As if it were a thing you chose

To complement, you say.

And thus you’d wish that I believed

Your mask is better than

The lovely visage you received

From God’s almighty hand.

O mask, by this you’re telling lies!

You lie! You falsely guide!

So now and ever I’ll despise

That you are wont to hide

The image on a human face

That man from God received:

His own! the cherished human race!

No threads were better weaved.

The face of God and man is one:

The beauty of the Lord,

The splendor of the only Son,

The Incarnated Word.

But now instead a mask I see

In every public place.

It fails, and that, so miserably,

To stand in for your face.