Allen Tate
THE EYE
to
E.
E.
Cummings
I see the horses and the sad streets
Of my childhood in an agate eye
Roving, under the clean sheets,
Over a black hole in the sky.
The
ill
man
is
only the child,
The evil man becomes the lover;
The natural man with evil roiled
Pulls down the sphereless sky for cover.
I see the gray heroes and the graves
Of my childhood in the nuclear eye–
Horizons spent in dun caves
Sucked down into the sinking sky.
The happy child becomes the man,
The elegant man becomes the mind,
The fathered gentleman who can
Perform quick feats of gentle kind.
I see the long field and the noon
Of my childhood in the carbolic eye,
Dissolving pupil of the moon
Seared from the raveled hole of the sky.
40
