On Blindness-An Ode to Milton

On Blindness (An Ode to Milton)

I wonder when Milton wrote about his blindness

If he ever worried about not

Being able to do power-point presentations anymore

Or those whizzy Prezi slides

Or read the fine-print of his students’ essays

In sometimes unintelligible handwriting.

Of the words of yet another brand new author or endless lecture notes and lit crit.

Or whether he knew that retinal detachments

Can be 50-50 though more likely 85% these days

I so thank the good Swiss doctor in the 1920s

For inventing the surgery that has saved many eyes

But I’ll bet you Milton didn’t walk out of Chanel

On Avenue Montaigne weeping, salty hot tears

of uncontrollable sobs, in thankfulness, of his eye sight saved

But I wonder too if he ever felt paranoid

About spots on his windscreen, or a buzzy mosquito near his eye

Thinking NEW FLOATERS have appeared

Or any little black dots set off new alarm bells

Sending him on a mini-panic of something being wrong with his eyes(again),

Nor wake up in jolts sometimes, testing if he could see in the dark,

But I know for sure I am just

Thankful, grateful and humbled that

I can see my salty tears; I can see the redness on my pupil,

I can SEE!

And even when that little boy

in the paediatric opthalmological suite next to mine

who was bawling with his unseeing eyes,

which made me sad,

But I feel doubly humbled and crushed in my humility and smallness

That other problems- glaucoma, cataract, ptosis

Seem pale in comparison,

For I’ll NEVER ever take for granted again,

The beauty of a simmering sunset, or the radiance of my mother’s smile,

Or the majesty of the sky slowly opening at dawn

And the intricate motifs and patterns on a lovely sheer softness of a silky scarf,

Or that I can still tread a needle, or buckle my son’s sandles,

And see, watch, witness, capture, behold

In the beauty of my children’s innocent love or watch them slowly grow

Or forsake the simple pleasure of reading them a bed-time story

And mostly see, freeze, frame the generous and vivid love,

Glowing in my man’s kind and earnest face,

How can you take such beauty for granted?

So, I thank Science and a God who loves me

For saving me

from blindness.

R-September 2012