Why should the eye
Have all the fun?
Why does love into my passive sight run
And remain there?
Because my mind doesn’t dare?
Because my heart doesn’t care?
Why should my passive eye feast
On the mere sight of her?
Which isn’t her?
Light ends, and weighs the least.
I see the way her face bends to show
Her neck. But what does my eye know?
She doesn’t know herself in my eye—
Ignorance ignorantly looked at—why
Does the sight of her give pleasure, why?
Why should my casual eye
Be the king, the policy, the people, the army, the spy?
If she is mine, the weight of her, everything must fall
Into my falling, my beautiful story rising to her beautiful story,
Wedding, romance, hero-worship, kindness, eye-to-eye glory.
The philosophy of long-distance seeing
Convinces my germ-fearing body sight is being.
Sight looks from the safety of its own
Seeing. Looking at looking is all that fear can own.
The million images drifting by
Finally brings madness to the power-hungry eye.
Passivity, even one that wears such a crown,
Brings the most optimistic lover down.
The eye has no authority at all.
She must be. She must recognize me.
It is how thought exists. It is how things in poetry
Come to be. Blind, she comes to me when I call.