Best Blindness Poems

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
...

A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
...

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.
...

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
...

WHO is Silvia? What is she?
   That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
   The heaven such grace did lend her,
...

Lest we forget
Those who were blinded
So that we may see
Lest we forget
...

To those fixed on white,
White is white,
To those fixed on black,
It is the same,
...

I close my eyes to find a place
In different time and different space
And in imagination find
A cloistered arbour for my mind
...

The First Epistle

Awake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
...

Family comes together
For always and forever
In sickness and in health
In poverty or in wealth
...

Thou, who dost dwell alone;
Thou, who dost know thine own;
Thou, to whom all are known,
From the cradle to the grave,--
...

Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
...

In a stage-coach, where late I chanced to be,
A little quiet girl my notice caught;
I saw she looked at nothing by the way,
...

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
...

Eyes tell, tell me, what you tell me,
telling something all too sweet,
making music out of beauty,
with a question hidden deep.
...

And now it was evening.

And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken."
...

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
...

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing:
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
...

Now do I know that Love is blind, for I
Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth,
No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
...

I'll go away one day, you know.
And I want to take as a reminiscence.
A fragment of your kiss on my lips,
Perhaps a hug,  or an embrace ...
...

Darkness is compared to blindness
Pessimism is termed as darkness
Permanent blockade of mind is considered as dark zone
Anything which h is not subject to change will prove prone
...

To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
...

I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
...

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
...

Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
...

The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain --
I heard a blind man groping
"Tap -- tap" with his cane;
...

I

A traveller on the skirt of Sarum's Plain
Pursued his vagrant way, with feet half bare;
...

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
...

I.

You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
...

Oh all ye, who pass by, whose eyes and mind
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blind;
To me, who took eyes that I might you find:
Was ever grief like mine?
...

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
...

Silence is a great blue bell
Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing,
In measure's pleasure, and in the supple symmetry
of the soaring of the immense intense wings
...

Samson. A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade.
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
...

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
...

OLD FITZ, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
...

You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
...

...Gelidity is always
Persisting...
As stone
Resisting...
...

"Adam, where are you?"
          God's hands
palpate darkness, the void
that is Adam's inattention,
...

Lo from our loitering ship a new land at last to be seen;
Toothed rocks down the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea,
And black slope the hillsides above, striped adown with their desolate green:
And a peak rises up on the west from the meeting of cloud and of sea,
...

I. Sunrise.


In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
...

Beside the pale, gentle moon
There shone a single radiant star,
Etched in the night of somber hue.
As I looked up a mighty swoon
...

The fallen lay
In the silence
Of eternity,
Never again to
...

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast:—
...

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
...

To know the impossible to be impossible
and yet to love the attempt;
to demonstrate that beauty is eternal, yet
seen only in that moment now,
...

See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
...

News o' grief had overteaken
Dark-eyed Fanny, now vorseaken;
There she zot, wi' breast a-heaven,
While vrom zide to zide, wi' grieven,
...

PALLAS, attending to the Muse's song,
Approv'd the just resentment of their wrong;
And thus reflects: While tamely I commend
Those who their injur'd deities defend,
...

A New Version: 1980

What is that little black thing I see there
in the white?
...

Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
...

I play'd with you 'mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
...

Good Friday was the day
Of the prodigy and crime,
...

goodness reasons to revel by reality
heart yet knows right path to heaven
eyes raves back by illusion of mirage
light refluxes into room of delusion
...

I have been tricked by flying too close
to what I thought I loved.
Now the candleflame is out, the wine spilled,
...

1
Dispel the darkness frightful
in the prideful, hardened mind
feigning greedily to be kind...
...

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
...

Come unite, you misfits of the shelter dark
For tonight we stand together as one
And if we let our demons become a pale ghosts
Then for a single moment we have won
...

It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke,
...

I stood musing in a black world,
Not knowing where to direct my feet.
And I saw the quick stream of men
Pouring ceaselessly,
...

We are accused of terrorism:
if we defended rose and woman
and the mighty verse ...
and the blueness of sky ...
A dominion .. nothing left therein...
No water, no air ..
No tent, no camel,
and not even dark Arabica coffee!!
...

The Youth

Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
...

I.

Here is the skull of a man: a man’s thoughts and emotions
Have moved under the thin bone vault like clouds
...

Life is now as confusing
as an Irish mermaid.
The dye from these thick, black socks
colours my toes in violet.
...

Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
...

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
...

Hail, Muse! et cetera.--We left Juan sleeping,
Pillow'd upon a fair and happy breast,
And watch'd by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
...

In the grey beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began,
The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it God? was it man?
The word of the earth to the spheres her sisters, the note of her song,
The sound of her speech in the ears of the starry and sisterly throng,
...

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail--
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail"--
...

CXXVII
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
...

Let other leaders
Retire
To play golf
& write
...

Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
Wear daggers in their garters: for they know
That they might hate another girl to death
...

Perhaps because i was born blind
Black be my forever favorite color
My trusted eyes are from you my friend
Though i don't know what beauty means
...

I1.
Love is enough: though the World be a-waning
.
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
...

When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum,
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come:
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old
For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold.
...

Cyriack, this three years day these eys, though clear
To outward view, of blemish or of spot;
Bereft of light thir seeing have forgot,
Nor to thir idle orbs doth sight appear
...

O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
...

She read
my closed eyelids

with the slightest
...

We are accused of terrorism
If we dare to write about the remains of a homeland
...

Straight through my heart this fact to-day,
By Truth’s own hand is driven:
God never takes one thing away,
But something else is given.
...

LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night.

Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.
...

News o' grief had overteaken
Dark-eyed Fanny, now vorseaken;
There she zot, wi' breast a-heaven,
While vrom zide to zide, wi' grieven,
...

This is the song of the wind as it came
Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:

_I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.
...

While George went to the house
For his revolver, Michal climbed up the hill
Weeping; but when he came with death in his hand
...

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
...

Upon an eve I sat me down and wept,
Because the world to me seemed nowise good;
Still autumn was it, & the meadows slept,
...

I
COOK was a captain of the Admiralty
When sea-captains had the evil eye,
...

Mercy, O thou Son of David!
Thus blind Bartimaeus prayed;
Others by thy word are saved,
Now to me afford thine aid:
...

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
...

Un gran vuelo de cuervos mancha el azul celeste.
Un soplo milenario trae amagos de peste.
Se asesinan los hombres en el extremo Este.
...

Such brave souls
Venturing
Into night
Enemy
...

The wind is East, the wind is West,
Blows in and out of haven;
...

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
...

GAL 5: 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,


What if?
...

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
...

AEons ago ye were,
Before the struggling changeful race of man
Wrought into being, ere the tragic stir
Of human toil and deep desire began:
...

I CANNOT love thee, tho' thy soul
Be one which all good thoughts control;
Altho' thy eyes be starry bright,
...

The beating of the guns grows louder.
'Not long, boys, now.'
My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder;
...

Your choice
is darkness
Mine is light
Your choice
...

MY friend he was; my friend from all the rest;
With childlike faith he oped to me his breast;
No door was locked on altar, grave or grief;
No weakness veiled, concealed no disbelief;
...

Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
The sun was shining. The dogs
...