What I see and whether I see. |
Nineteen passed – most in the depths of frigid waters so deep. No lights have, no lights could ever have, even with will, no lights would ever dare to penetrate there. Down below in frosty expanses untouched, in spaces forgotten, overlooked, right in front in sight; consumed, and solely constructed by a time which froze, restrung, wholly created me; an amorphous me, an estranged me; a me that I could look in with my eye that may not see. Nineteen passed – most in the clutches, the claws and jaws of a beast, unseeing, unfeeling, but more perceptive than me, the one watching and waiting. Fear-choked, hurt-kept into blistering silence, unraveling my stability; clinging to hope that never came except to drag lower my lands, leaves me in deeper, colder waters – I cannot swim; I drown, oh, I slip beneath my frown; I go to places of profound intimacy and look in with my eye that may not see. Nineteen passed – most in the season of temporal length, [only]; there I dared not and could not; I was never seasoned. Clever, I grew a poisonous tree deep within me; rooted in my Fall, frozen in snows, thawed and dried in the heat of my anger; serene and lonesome and weary, the deepest of seclusions as the only comfort to me, with its only hand of wisdom; and gently led on affections catch me so that I look there, look in with my eye that may not see. Nineteen present – not all down below, some here above the waking world; above these storms I can breathe fresh air, new smells, the touch of that great portion of man’s life; purer, tranquil, no less nameless, unremembered. Frugal, my time here in sensations sweet. The curiously obscure charms of humanity here with me and yet present, clear. Quiet have been these paintings entwined abundantly in a misery divine; and I look to them, at them, for them, look in with my eye that may not see. But see I do. Often see I that sensation called but vain belief – Often say I that I feel with my eye, I hear with my eye, the most intense convulsion of the mind, astonishment in rarity never mentioned nor found nor – oh! The extremes of my eye often see I. And how I wonder whether I may not see at all. |