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Oedipus in Blindness




The mystic stone and mantic bough
are mute and unregarded now;
  the vocal fount is dry:
but still the sun and sand and sea
retain the ancient clarity
  that saw beyond the sky,

and though no more the cyclic dance
of praise instils the cleareyed trance
  that knows what is not seen,
the radiant darknesses that fill
the gaze that brilliance crushed can still
  enlighten what we mean.

O blinding eye, whose naked glare
reveals forever everywhere,
  whose luminous fury peels
the dark disguise from every blight
to stain it clean, whose ruthless sight
  sickens what it heals,

since you at last have laid me bare
of all but what I am, my prayer
  is only that your rays
of mortal truthfulness that bore
the answer to my being, no more
  shall pierce my emptied gaze,

but let the endless sightlessness
that I myself embrace, confess
  the crime which you have shown
is I myself, and let these halls
of silence shrine within their walls
  the sin that I have known,

so others, whom your dreadful gleam
of vision wakens from this dream
  that ends in death, may lift
their dazed and wounded eyes to me
and know that I was meant to be
  a strange and healing gift.

Though what I am may not be heard,
yet I dare speak the single word
  that makes this plague a cure:
polluted in my outcast night,
in blindness, I declare the light
  is holy, sweet, and pure.



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