To E. E. Cummings <br /> <br />I see the horses and the sad streets <br />Of my childhood in an agate eye <br />Roving, under the clean sheets, <br />Over a black hole in the sky. <br /> <br />The ill man becomes the child, <br />The evil man becomes the lover; <br />The natural man with evil roiled <br />Pulls down the sphereless sky for cover. <br /> <br />I see the gray heroes and the graves <br />Of my childhood in the nuclear eye- <br />Horizons spent in dun caves <br />Sucked down into the sinking sky. <br /> <br />The happy child becomes the man, <br />The elegant man becomes the mind, <br />The fathered gentleman who can <br />Perform quick feats of gentle kind. <br /> <br />I see the long field and the noon <br />Of my childhood in the carbolic eye, <br />Dissolving pupil of the moon <br />Seared from the raveled hole of the sky. <br /> <br />The nice ladies and gentlemen, <br />The teaser and the jelly-bean <br />Play cockalorum-and-the-hen, <br />When the cool afternoons pour green: <br /> <br />I see the father and the cooling cup <br />Of my childhood in the swallowing sky <br />Down, down, until down is up <br />And there is nothing in the eye, <br /> <br />Shut shutter of the mineral man <br />Who takes the fatherless dark to bed, <br />The acid sky to the brain-pan; <br />And calls the crows to peck his head.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-eye-10/
