The Eye

To E.

E.

CummingsI see the horses and the sad

Of my childhood in an agate

Roving, under the clean sheets,

Over a black hole in the sky.

The ill man becomes the child,

The evil man becomes the lover;

The natural man with evil

Pulls down the sphereless sky for cover.

I see the gray heroes and the

Of my childhood in the nuclear eye-Horizons spent in dun

Sucked down into the sinking sky.

The happy child becomes the man,

The elegant man becomes the mind,

The fathered gentleman who

Perform quick feats of gentle kind.

I see the long field and the

Of my childhood in the carbolic eye,

Dissolving pupil of the

Seared from the raveled hole of the sky.

The nice ladies and gentlemen,

The teaser and the

Play cockalorum-and-the-hen,

When the cool afternoons pour green:

I see the father and the cooling

Of my childhood in the swallowing

Down, down, until down is

And there is nothing in the eye,

Shut shutter of the mineral

Who takes the fatherless dark to bed,

The acid sky to the brain-pan;

And calls the crows to peck his head.