an old poem

I wrote this in 1998. I don't seem to have any new poetry in me, but it keeps seeming relevant here:

"Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare.
Let all who prate of beauty hold their peace.
...O holy day, When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Harp Weaver

If Euclid looked on beauty,
    still,
        angles and planes are not
               moist earth,
                    fog-dripping redwoods,
                         soft-curving mother’s belly
                              lung-testing newborn cries.
Euclid looked on Beauty, bare,
but She is clothed in
    bird-screeching, vine-looped canopies of trees,
          emerald-glistening frogs on leaf-sprouting branches,
               moss-springing rocks beside tumbling streams.
                    twice-coiling DNA, fecund with forms.
In laboratories, in universities,
    Euclid’s heirs look with his gaze.
Let all who look for Beauty
    take Her hand,
          and join the tribe of life,
               swirling in its vibrant dance.