A beauty blooms amid the modern blight—

Where ink or studs or rings festoon the flesh;

This crude adornment, deemed a kind of rite,

While leaving gentler tastes quite dispossessed.

Once beasts of burden sported markings so,

By brand, all chattel tallied under law,

So everywhere such witless stock might go

Their swift return be aided without pause.

In Rubens’ time the plump were seen as fair;

Perhaps Neanderthal prized skin unshorn,

The Masai men crave pates quite smooth and bare,

While Suri tribes strange duck-like lips adorn.

Caprice in beauty may fond hearts enthuse,

By love or lust, such fashion to bemuse.