Stephen Kuusisto
EMILY DICKINSON AND THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE*
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1.
A bird, dun colored & nearly bald flits above the retina and vanishes
Like a Calvinist toy – a straw doll lost in snow…
"I am a girl going blind," she thinks. "Soon I will be dark as a hat
Or something we might lace."
Of talk there is no use–
The tongue itself is blanked,
One might speak to sleeves
Or the buttons of father's shirt.
Still the bird returns
& walks across the eye
Like Milton's Eve, dream-walking.
"To think what I may tell it," she thinks. "that's the trick–
A small blind wisdom as winter ends…"
She sees the bird already knows:
It bathes itself,
Then tucks to clean its wings.
My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I am feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings…
2.
To be blind is the end of autumn.
Watch as the afternoon falls like seeds;
Keep a locket; press the sights.
The sun kept setting, setting still;
No hue of afternoon
Upon the village I perceived–
From house to house 't was noon.
The dusk kept dropping, dropping still
No dew upon the grass,
But only on my forehead stopped,
And wandered in my face.
What medicine for this?
Earthen face and clay eyes…
3.
I see the doctor's skill
Is made of repetition;
Lens after lens he tries;
But strangest
Is a difference.
He sees the planet rise
In the blank sky of faith,
My eye,
Too blind he says for day
But equal to twilight.
He looks long
Where nothing moves
But inscape blood
Those hairs of anemone,
Garnet script
Mine alone.
I won't go blind
He says,
Though much will be gained
Or lost
By thinking so.
Home again at nightfall
The cemetery grass
Fills with fireflies…
And as he promised
I alone see
How, giddy with parturition
They circle
Amid the graves.
Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Planet of the Blind and Eavesdropping and a
volume of poems, Only Bread, Only Light. He has recently completed a new collection of poems, Letters to Borges which will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. He teaches
at Syracuse University. |