To a Beautiful Man

Sometimes I wish I had never seen your face.
How much easier life would be then in blissful ignorance! How much more enjoyable the earthly pleasures would seem, hadn’t I ever known the pleasure of beholding you. I would have never been troubled by the fact that somewhere in the world you walk the streets and some eyes may delight in you – some random, unconscious eyes that are not mine. I wouldn’t be reconstructing your image in my mind constantly. Wouldn’t that appear the perfect state?
But then, hadn’t I seen your face, how would I know what beauty is? How would I know that fire can have green shade, or that smile can be made of thousands of sunshines?
Hadn’t I seen your face, how would I know then how intense heart can feel, how high imagination can soar? The poet in me finds his inspiration in you – his words emerge in a flow. The artist in me, some kind of Basil Hallward1, with an eye for the fine, marvels at you, wants to preserve your beauty in any possible way.
Had I not known your beauty, I might have invented it, but then, how could it surpass the fine work Nature had performed on you?
It is true that I sometimes wish I’d never seen your face, but yet—I’d hate to stay ignorant of its existence. I don’t want the perfect existence; I want it just like that – with you in it.

Footnotes
1  The painter that painted the picture of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”