Cataract

Emptied of light
                          the eye
                                      draws upon its own resources
archived images
                           turbulence predominating
yet soothing somehow, reassuring
shaped so long ago
                 perhaps in dream
or nightmare, meanings lost or changed now,
put to other uses.
                              They have the character
of poems from another tongue
                                                 trying out our language.

But it's the lightness
                                  the ease, that's unexpected,
as if the socket, like an empty picture house
and by some kind of back-projection
still tries to entertain
                                     to keep the balls in play.
We never closed it seems to say
all strays are welcome to the play.
It's sufficiently diverting
                                         to keep my fears at bay.


And so I watch as through a soldier's night-sight
                                                                                tell myself:
it's just the drape across my face that stains the whole world green;
that the sky
                     its clouds like shadows of itself,
the hills that split apart as easily as melting icebergs;
the sun, distinctive in its yellowness,
too bright to hold in focus
                                             inching ever nearer;
and my slow drift to blindness
                                                  or an unimaginable light:
that none of this amounts to threat or menace.
Indeed, there is a rainbow
                                               hovering above the sun
behind green falling snow.

No suspicion of the pain I was expecting
but there was pain awhile ago.
Long and thin             and for a moment only
aiming at the brain            but stopping short.

The main thing is, of course:
it's going well,
I know it from the chat
light
inconsequential
concerned with
horses            boyfriends             sex             and curly kale for breakfast

I hear it just above the sound of water
a fierce tide running
swirl and slap of surf and sea            and echoing
within the cave that, sighted once...

is sighted once again.
My sojourn world of logic
torn away            the eyes
flooded now with light            out of kilter with each other
and with the world as I have long supposed it:
face and features oddly angled
            force and fabric
misaligned
at odds with one another.