Volume 4, Issue 7, May 1996

TO OUR EYES THE BLIND MAN

To our eyes the blind man's lover was ugly
when she would guide him each evening, patient,
past dirty windows and the slandering eyes
of our neighbourhood - she never tired
of the gauntlet, the grins, the whispering
gathered schoolboys or their poised
silence so much worse than whispering....

And there I was with the others - the lean one,
laughing - while streetlamps at the butt of long
late-summer days grew bright and spotlit
the two of them; scapegoats in a circus ring
without roof or limit, so our laughter
leapt free, grew up as it hardened
into the walls and streets and crowds we knew as cities....

Ugly, the boys sang, and I sang, but he clutched
her hand so tight, so tight it seemed
he was the one guiding her to the sweet
dark city of his love - free
from the bitter half-lit boroughs of the seeing.

The above poem is taken from "The Ecstasy of Skeptics", Anansi Press. The author is Steven Heighton, a Kingston writer.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.