The Country of the Blind

 Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men, 
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed.
 A long 
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.


At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few, 
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date, 
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn;

Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their 
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some 
Eunuch'd, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of

Abstract thoughts.
 If a man, one that had eyes, a poor 
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea waves, or admired how
Warm tints change in a lady's cheek,

None complained he had used words from an alien tongue, 
None question'd.
 It was worse.
 All would agree 'Of course,'
Came their answer.
 "We've all felt
Just like that.
" They were wrong.
 And he


Knew too much to be clear, could not explain.
 The words --
Sold, raped flung to the dogs -- now could avail no more;
Hence silence.
 But the mouldwarps,
With glib confidence, easily

Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set
Fools concocting a myth, taking the worlds for things.

Do you think this a far-fetched
Picture? Go then about among

Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once,
Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable,
Dear but dear as a mountain- 
Mass, stood plain to the inward eye.

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