The Eye Blinded

FROM PACKED SARCOPHAGI TO

THE FOUNTAINHEAD, SOUTHPAWED BY

THE OBSCURE EYE, DOUGHBOY TEARS

THE ICON FROM HIS EMPIRE

On the hill, by cusp of shoe sole,

blue gossips gab; precarious

armoured steeplejacks mount giddy

blades, and the hoodwinged domino

clings to an electric fractal's cusp.

This state was ever the bluebell

of the little kingdoms — was

ever the cusp on the crest's

birding pubescence.

Here, on the focal pimple of

provincial acne, this tumescence

is the forehead's pore.

Here he has the starlings terraced

in the ivy, and allotment

plums and the coffee morning gabbers

in their pots— how the hamfist

doughboy draws out his bones.

Now in Smallewoode,

where arboreal tonsils swell

in the throat, indentured parades

peel with the incessent workmen;

pound shops spite Somerfield's cusping

of the gentrified brigade, since

The Lane is just a step away,

and the houses sell

— those unhatcheted still by

the studio morning's lacy smirk —

Not now in Smallewoode, where

doughboy's rented yard

is pretty enough, th'effulgent

gabber is unlaced, and cobbledv

starling-still.

Cut for him his lids, the eye

the eye blinded, the difference

is a thorny crown. Cut for him

his lids in the neutered safety

of a sleeved ace.

'We can, at any time, double

but then always they see too much.'

[Poe, The Veil of the Soul]

Where are the doll smashers? They would

take the dolly from his crib, would

tear the mobile from his eye — his

eye blinded — and call him Jack.

And fusted Milton surely had his fill

of the Bridge of Sighs, Caravaggio's

ankles, the Sistine, Rembrant's eyes—I had

never seen so many southpaws captured

in the low countries, that the camera

smirks at its master—

Took his ripe belly

on the grand tour, and feasted, as he sat,

old and dictating his Puritan doubt,

feasting on the carcass of his sight —

the eye, the eye blinded. But his words

are as clear as the camera's image,

and the reverse of the invert's canvas,

his eye sharper than the squinting man's,

and his lips play the shape of the vista.

And he has carved a lot of things —

dug a mouth from the pavement, slit

a stray dog's throat for vocal chords,

— though limited to shells for ears —

the grand tourism of the mind

has gravely fallen

in this thing-iconography;

but the remembering sage

with his remembering rooms

has an eye for demolition;

cries — 'Simonides

you forgot, dear master, to sing.

'Ragged palace beset by huns;

the scholar stoops,

the tongue is licensed

as a copper crown; the lotus

hangs degraded from an absent

hand; the sandalled feet are filthy —

where eye is cataract mind is

dammed.'

And so it twists and turns, until

he has carved himself an icon,

which is pretty to the touch and —

through the vapours

of his imagining eye, bold

enough to green-tinge Mammon.

He dissolves the bogus features,

builds a palace for the hill, though

the little kingdoms would suffice.

And that little boy would have us,

in his dilettante way, destroy

the very palace we have raided,

slice lids to squint through,

throw out the obscure camera

and observe, travel and observe

all the sights, the sighs

the obdurate, canvassed sighs.