she knows the world's assessment has been wrong

Because it is a curse to be beautiful 

and thus dismissed by other men, 

the pretty man often wants to marry 

mind, or grit, or great heart undistracted. 

This is not the same as the lovely woman 

who marries someone plain: she knows 

the world's assessment has been wrong, 

knows she is a fraud and proclaims it 

with that mirror. The handsome man feels 

no such scorn: yes, he is as gorgeous 

as they say, but it's not a useful currency, 

except with the plain woman who marries him 

as one would pocket found-money or plant a rose. 

But the plain man, the homely man, the man 

hunched like a cricket or built like a jug, 

who marries beauty and covets his own wife, 

the man who prays at the altar of his wife, 

the man who weeps when he has her, weeps when she's gone— 

remember Menelaus, how he burned? 

 

[Ellen Bryant Voigt {1943- } from 'Variations: Thorn-Apple' in Collected Poems]