The Ocularist

One of the earliest

                              eyes was found

                                                        with the ancient

corpse of a woman

                               in Persia, hers

                                                       made of gold

to resemble

                    a small sun—

                                          iris and sclera

chased rays—

                       clear testament

                                                 not to the eye,

but to the light

                         that had been

                                                  made go out.

The later ones

                        crafted of glass

                                                  I studied

and practiced

                       for fire-blown

                                               beauty, learning

another fragility,

                            vulnerability

                                                  to the body’s

heat, the way

                       glass shatters

                                                inside the fleetest

fever. For

                 its give—

                                  and forgiveness—

I worked then

                        in ivory-wax,

                                               and after

perfecting the shape,

                                 cloned with

                                                     paint an iris,

small blood

                   vessels from

                                        filaments of red

silk, then sealed

                            the whole

                                              beneath an acrylic

veneer—thin,

                      invisible. Mine

                                             was always

the smaller

                   studio, the work

                                              fine, lonely

as a jeweler’s,

                       my needs

                                         the same—a window,

a lamp, lighted

                      eye loupe. Half-

                                                sculptor, half-

illustrator, I

                    thought for

                                        a long time

I was crafting

                       something place-

                                                   saving at best,

an orbit-

              warmed imposter,

                                             elegy,

implied

                 narrative of loss—

                                                 flying glass

or knife,

                a thumb’s determined

                                                     gouge. But I

learned finally

                        to manipulate

                                                 the way light

played the sphere—

                               the pupil

                                               seeming to dilate

from dusk or

                      desire—becoming

                                                    architect

not of form

                   but of function,

                                             not of object

but of the seen-

                          self, enticing it not

                                                          to look away.

The patient’s

                     eye took with it,

                                                after all,

only periphery

                              and the perception

                                                               of depth,

asides the truest

                               beholding has

                                                       never required.

So I aligned

                      the gaze

                                      for the whole-sighted

world, that

                   it might find

                                        some small figment

of itself

              contained there, already in

                                                           the brain—

I could make it

                        believe—the fact

                                                    of what was

not there of no

                         matter at all,

                                                the final

measure of an eye’s

                                  worth, in fact,

                                                          its complete

disappearance—

                           and with it,

                                               mine—into

the opposite

                      eye that was

such belief.