First, I suspect him
of haunting the library
to learn how long it takes
and if suburban ears
will sharpen like a wolf's
to hint some sneaking killer
hard upon the blind man's
treasure-trove, or if his skin
will learn to prickle
at the faintest breaths of speech
a week away or in another town
to tempt marauding businessmen
to guess the prey be easier
now, for his infirmity (and then
to spring like an unknown heir
in a Board meeting, rich light
stroking vaguely the mahogany
expanses to his clamorous
and irreversible pre-emption,
scoundrels routed and confused),
or if tongue and scent
will tell him now if women
are in heat, or, doglike, he
may smell and taste the fear
of a stark antagonist
whose trepidation known
would turn the edge back
into his own heart--victory!
for the blind man whose body
now has recompensed the whole
for partial deprivation.

But if he should cry out
in joy at such reward, and if
the voice should hoarsely roar
or wither to a whisper,
some shock of diminution
then might make the point
so artistically evaded (for
blind is no cheap stunt,
no graven calf to grind
and pulverize to drink for bitter
disapproval, a lesson to learn
and share in stone letters
or postcards with angry
condescended crowds--it is
no way in: blind is black,
or we are always seeing,
grays and blurring smokes
across the face as seeing,
only indistinct, and yet distinct
in their own way, some shades
and foggy drifts imperative
if we not lie ourselves to sleep
in wistful clarity).

.....................He may have heard
(I think I have, or I have said,
or shall)--not in general lore--
that to go blind is to affect,
not meaning to, something
somewhere else, the body
traumatized and senseless
to its wretchedness
diffused in misdirection
to the ear lobe, larynx, marrow,
phantom pains on missions
discreet but merciless
(if not to change the voice,
perhaps the growth of nails or
speed of digestion or the
crumbling of teeth hastened
after false remission of decay,
to feel again the pieces
molder in the mouth, the hard
glitter of survival go soft
just before time falls over).

One can focus on blindness,
with notice deal with it
directly, as though stiffening
at the dentist's touch before
the drill (readiness is all,
we sometimes feel--the executioner
will run to blood yet one more time
his finger on the sharp-to-dis-
appearing axe-edge), blindness
more heroic than daily choices,
possibilities fewer, depth
beyond imagination.

....................The poet is large,
blond, and sagging notice-
ably at every point. Perhaps
his legs (I understand he runs
and runs) are less sagging
or more, from such effort
as to squander their support).
He studies my blinding.

Second, his admiration
is of course flattering (I
thought, faltering, as if
the time had come now
to give up awe and write of me--
when we write of anyone,
it is of ourselves), but if
the need to know how to see
(or how to go blind)
is interesting to Americans (he
seems egregiously American to me)
then the flattery strieks
less than the exploitation.
I am not snakes or sharks or sheep.

Perhaps it would be better
that he make his own eyes
go weak for obscure Latin poets,
or that he write, in tiny letters,
tales and ruminations he himself
must prove by dim or brilliant
light (he may, if he should learn,
seek confirmation of Xatlcol, I know).

I can tell him
(and it appears that I will, or do)
that to make the poem is not the same
as to be blind.

................He knows deceptions
full of meaning to be worried by some
into order. None of us here shall say
there is pattern in the sea because
the chaos is monstrous and irresistible.

We need safety and quiet,
even if it cannot be seen clearly
as it once could, left now
only to touch and hoping
in the good will of listeners
and the ministrations of clerks
whose filed and rendered truths
allow some fine degree of error,
even in the numbers fractioned
and reduced, with letters and dates
to qualify and radicalize
with no chord to cut across a bow,
no string drawn to lean quietly
as it might into some thrusting thing
which neither of us can lately report
or see, though we try like heroes.