Fault

Good Eye

12 Good Eye 1. A luminous thing: the clock, unglassed, seen First time in over three decades, Since I was seven. Mere opening Of pupil into the dark, and time’s face Presents itself. Even now, too often I close my eyes to see, and forget To open them, feeling my way by hand Through the familiar dark. Even now the light Has blazed across my eyes, sharp, to sharpen Them back into unaided vision, I must Remind my brain to use them. See, waken, It thinks again, every moment just Turning outward, composing the usual room From light, not memory; the real from dream. 2. Imagine perfect symmetry. Gone, a universe, To rough edges, galaxies on the fly. Admit: nowadays, looking at the sky, We don’t look. We plant fields of ears The scientist turns on her great, grinding gears— And on our dollar—heaven’s way, Toward those resonant flame spheres whirring by, Lost in burning themselves out. Sheer Suicides. Once we’ve considered them, there. If one snuffs out before the machine sees it Did it exist? Still matter, that distant sign Screened, translated, already so determined She can barely distinguish it from static, The cosmic mumble messing up the line. 13 3. I’ve been visiting old observatories Wound around their stairs, so much glass Set in stone that spins itself by stories Into sky. How those dead men must Have loved their nightly flights, the polished plates That flung them heavenward in fire and gas. They made our universe. Some nights Surely they remembered just to gaze, Instead, say, of counting—all those points!— Or measuring the arc from star to star, And, by measuring, fixing it. Just there, Spaced by minutes and seconds. What it’s taken us to travel here. We count our time by spinning round a star. 4. So: happiness. I think all the time Of luck. Once, I raised my eyes to see A flock of southbound geese inscribe the moon: V for virtue, voracious, velocity’s Swift kick to the ribs, for the flight Of beating ghosts, for geese wheeling To their private star, some small light Only they can read by. How do they feel it? A signal on the brain, in the heart— Call it lodestar, magnet, pulling them Across the helpless heavens. I’ve no such art, No sure sign how to travel home. So I wander, happy. And why not? How lost can I be? My tiny planet? 14 5. By such measurements we are blessed. Safety in numbers: force on an airplane’s wing; Centuries ago, a ship was placed at last In time and so in space. The spheres sing, As does the laser, counting its cut, precise So I, too, will see by the numbers, Cornea peeling, slice by measured slice. Two months later, I almost can’t remember What it was like not to see. So pure— What the physicist sees—she must imagine It in equations to make it visible. There, Not only in some numeric heaven Ghosted by ideas. Machines click on, Counting on the ever-divisible photon. 6. Sometimes, I can hardly remember which stairs Turned into which night, which window Overlooked what city, its luminous glow Reflected from which flow of river Some ancient instruments lifted my gaze above. We all think ourselves symmetrical, Even touching our hearts. Now, now, We know so much more than we can see. All We’ve ever known. And luck: do we Use it or use it up? My cup’s full To brimming in the moment I drain it dry, And if it had a brim, the sky would spill Over its own edges. Violent spark Is all that burns the blood through the heart. 15 7. Our universe, cold and broken. Wonderful, To live even in restless peace like this: My city torn by whirlwind, the cloud funneled By earth’s turn overhead. Such a noise Of wind’s engine, the future the engine bears. In flying machines, we tend oracles We count on for warning. No sign here Until heaven had turned all wrack, all Ruin. But not all ruin. Catastrophe Builds in the future’s darkness. What’s left. Not all. Across the ocean, fault will turn a city: Shaken, it undoes us, wall by wall. Number human against human, wave, or fire. Too many dead to count. So I count stars 8. Cresting...