Of Helen Kellar

We thought to care for her, to give her life inside her tomb, surrounding her with sound and sight though second-hand, with all the light of knowledge and the color of our joie de vivre. We would create in her a channel to a world she could not understand-- then revel in her gratitude. What irony, that she, the partial woman that we playful gods created showed her partiality to other suns she knew that we did not. Outrageous! She the teacher that we had to teach to learn? She, the one who found serenity in that rich silence unoccluded by the lightning swords, the battle hymns the marchers' vanity called truth. No, Helen's sight emerges from a realm that we, encumbered by the ear and eye, must be denied, lest she let us in to see... lest she share with us the symphony upon her private stage, and via some miraculous device that she would like to give away to us who wear our blindfolds much too readily. I must confess to jealousy sequestered in my shadowed room, upon my little bench, and wishing that I knew what Helen did, and had resource to reach into my dark and bring out light, too magnificent for me alone to keep. ~