Encore: Man with River Blindness

By Nathan Bartel ’02

The day was longer, though that’s not important,
it happens every March, I felt gagged by my work,
but not my work exactly, not the volume, it was
an oily sadness, what must be like the gravity
of a last nail, the grief of finishing, I went
to the restaurant late, Ian came in, he needed
some keys, Ian was sick, I said he shouldn’t
drive himself, he had an eye infection, he left
the restaurant, his eyes wouldn’t stop pussing.
I remembered a picture in The World’s Best
Photographs: 1980-1990. I came
home, I had an idea for a poem, I tried
to write but it was late and Rachael was already
asleep, I went to bed, the bed was already warm, I remembered
the title of the photograph, the photograph was called
“Man with River Blindness,” the man’s eyes were like a river,
they were wet and weeping,
the man’s cataracts looked like a moon in the river,
the moon reflected in a river, the man’s two eyes
like two rivers running and holding the moon,
like two rivers carrying sadness like the moon,
the moon was heavy it overflowed them the man
was weeping, I turned off the lamp,
there was darkness thick enough to eat, and breathing.