Now this Lionel Kearns that I introduced you to
at the beginning wrote a poem about blindness.
He has the same phobia that I have,
that we're not going to be able to see like Milton someday.
But I don't have any daughters.
He has one.
"Through my eyes, eager and wary for the energy.
Through my eyes, lit every moment
lighting my way to the world.
Around me I feel the batteries running down.
But to be blind--
making out the round edge of the bright hung moon, moon, moon.
Now there is the yellow haze.
I squeezed my eyelids to press it
out not wanting my light of blue sky to drop into the ocean
night.
We burn candles, electric lights at night.
Blind as a bat, he felt the boat bumping under him,
dropped his sailor into the hole of darkness.
Shapes meld and swell, surge into moving outlines.
Out, unholy Milton, said his villain
in the white haze of God's left hand,
pulled the floor out dropped him into darkness.
Also, I must touch you, love you, are in focus in my reach.
And my hands, to know the touch of things,
have no sight to them but the suggestion as amoebas swimming
on the glass.
Ray Charles in dark glasses all last summer in San Francisco.
The sun shone upon a returning sea under rolling clouds.
Even now, squinting under this reading lamp on white paper,
I stared all this energy there, eager and weary for the light,
light, light in this white haze.