The Blind

The blind lead the blind

Because the seers do not see any more

And the oracles have fallen silent.

The invalids perceive the world more sharply –

The beholders stumble and fall in broad daylight.

This Terra Firma is filled with Saint Thomases

For whom Blindness would a Bane be;

Only a handful of Tiresiases, even less Œdipi,

Who found Vision beyond Knowledge,

Inhabit this land the valid only tread.

Perivaticinator of the side-roads,

The blind listens to the sound of the gravel

And not only predicts, but is a thaumaturge.

Yet only darkness to be observed

In the abyss of his orbits.

Beauty is Truth, Truth, Beauty, the poet said:

That is all ye need to see, said the blind.

One day an old man, who had been blind

Since he was a little child,

Told to me he could feel the shadows.

He could sense on his skin the weight

Of the shadow of a tree, of a wall, of a man.

The only thing in reality that his senses could apprehend

Was the presence of that tree, wall, man,

Combined with the warmth of the sun on his visage.

Yet I like the way he perceived the poetry of life,

And light and shadow do have a certain weight,

If you care to pay attention.

Where the flesh fails, the will compensates.

Otherwise this world would be more than empty,

And the people who put their hands

In front of their eyes like blinkers

In order not to see reality

Just glare at the riddled palms

Of their blindfolded future.

Hence the blind lead the blindfolded,

For they know the path

In the faint obscurity behind

The eyelids.