Each day I set pen to paper
The pen is entirely in my head
Paper is far away in the future
I say think what you want
Release the crows
From their cages
**
I feel sorry for the sighted
Scanning tiny boxes
Looking to break free
From tyrannies of plot
Like owning a bust of Stalin
Which you have to explain
**
Now an old man comes down the street
A kind of scrawny angel
Pushing a bent bicycle
Spokes flashing in the sun
He’s a Korean war veteran
Compared to him
Everyone else
is motionless
**
Then again it’s just me: “Trace
The veins of a barberry leaf
That’s Braille enough…”
In sidelong darkness
When the day is insufficient
Minutes not feeding me
Up river go the words
The outcast words
Oh anything will do
**
Here come the dancers, half Greek half sky
Fragrance of goat’s milk and iron—
All day, blind, alone, talking to myself
(For that’s how it was
Lonely kid telling stories to no one
In a bomb shelter, 1960
Already in love with Hercules
Who must have had friends.)
**
As I grow older
My hands open more slowly
Maybe they know more
What’s empty turns its face to us
Said a good poet, long ago
My left hand agrees, longs to touch her
My right is stoical
Leaves fingerprints
Like tracks of deer in snow
Planet of the Blind 