What is the relevance of beauty in the chaos of today's world? Is it right to cling to it, to seek it out, to give it prominence? Is the persistent seeking of beauty a kind of resistance to the chaos? Can it be? Does it have to be? I'm looking for the answers in flowers, in poetry, and in the light of interiors. 

In a poem by the Italian writer, Patrizia Cavalli, from her book, my poems won't change the world, she says, 

O stay where you are! Here
in the uncertain hour of a late afternoon
looking outward and looking in
I see this beauty
all I see is beauty.
Something that convinces, asks to be seen,
though it does nothing, just stays where it is,
and merely by existing wins me over.

In Kay Ryan's poem, light seems to have a mind of its own. It enters the house in myriad ways, irrepressible, unstoppable. We don't have a say in how it reaches in. Nevertheless, light mixed with silence creates something new, an island, a retreat, a place of respite. 

The Light of Interiors

by Kay Ryan

The light of interiors
is the admixture
of who knows how many
doors ajar, windows
casually curtained,
unblinded or opened,
oculi set into ceilings,
wells, ports, shafts,
loose fits, leaks,
and other breaches
of surface. But, in
any case, the light,
once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often-handled, muffled
in carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways,
baffled equally
by scatter and order
to an ideal and now
sourceless texture which,
when mixed with silence,
makes of a simple
table with flowers
an island.

– from The Best of It, by Kay Ryan 

A few days ago I went into the garden and clipped flowers, the late bloomers, the ones hanging on. It's since rained heavily and even been below 0. Nevertheless they persist.