'In Praise of Pain' - Heather McHugh

Found Heather McHugh's poem 'In Praise of Pain' via this post and while there are lovely poems there, this one is the one I want to say, when I read, Mine! and to crush and damage and watch as it gives off its light.

In Praise of Pain
Heather McHugh 

A brilliance takes up residence in flaws—

a brilliance all the unchipped faces of design   

refuse. The wine collects its starlets

at a lip's fault, sunlight where the nicked   

glass angles, and affection where the eye   

is least correctable, where arrows of

unquivered light are lodged, where someone   

else's eyes have come to be concerned.

For beauty's sake, assault and drive and burn   

the devil from the simply perfect sun.   

Demand a birthmark on the skin of love,   

a tremble in the touch, in come a cry,   

and let the silverware of nights be flecked,   

the moon pocked to distribute more or less   

indwelling alloys of its dim and shine   

by nip and tuck, by chance's dance of laws.

The brightness drawn and quartered on a sheet,   

the moment cracked upon a bed, will last   

as if you soldered them with moon and flux.   

And break the bottle of the eye to see

what lights are spun of accident and glass. 

                                                              from Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993.