Blind Man

by Davey Morrison Dillard

“Mud in your eye and a beam in theirs.” That’s

what he told me, the much talked-of Stranger,

when I was led to meet him,

stumbling across the unseen jagged terrain which

had long since been made familiar in my

heels’ most battered memory.

I did not understand why he spit into the dust,

why he sullied my already imperfection,

adding blackness unto blackness;

nor, in wonder (or in, perhaps, confusion)

did I question.

And when I washed—I cannot express

how very like a paradox it was,

darkness cleaving unto darkness

until the faintest morning break of light

trickled into my newly rendered

irises

and I had to shut them for the blindingness

of seeing; for the moisture which was entering

and exiting without and within, as one too young

for walls.

And so, I tell you, Whether he be a sinner

or no, I know not: but one thing I know,

That once I was blind and now I see.