Enough of tin-snips for the moment

Strong winds do shake…
Can beauty last or is its brevity
The thing which matters most? When badly sung
Is Cosi’s trio ruined fatally,
Its throb dispersed, its close-linked pearls unstrung?

The menace of a changing point of view;
Can Constable survive the biscuit* tin?
Is Waste Land’s stoic wisdom cast askew
When found in advertising’s rubbish bin?

Peugeots corrupt the valley of the Lot,
Displacing oaks with their unnatural sheen.
Yet cars depart, their sound a passing blot,
And succulence assumes its old routine.

Beauty - or art (he shrugs) - is form and place
Harmonic with apparent destiny,
A bell that rings and makes some sense of space,
A new yet old familiarity.

But I’m the filter of this quality,
I set the seal on what I recognise;
A week ahead I may disqualify
That judgement taken by my younger eyes.

And others share my infidelity
By ripping out that planted boundary fence,
Allowing torpor, whim or emnity
To muscle in on beauty’s permanence.

Time’s the villain for us all; it ordains
Our lives as well as that of beauty’s span,
Which comes and goes, diffuses and regains
A moment’s power, fading, soon outran

*Cookie for US readers

NOTE (1) This was to have been a sestina
until I checked out the sestina’s rhyme
sequence. Not for me. Like doing a 100 m
dash in diver’s boots.

(2) Incorrect verb tense in last line. But what
the hell.