An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
The Cyclops learned this lesson the hard way
when he ate Odysseus' men. While he was drunk
and sleeping, they plunged a red-hot spike into his eye.
Soothed by Mercury's music, Argus closed all one hundred
eyes, lost his head. Juno kept his eyes, placed them in her
peacock's tail, to flash and glow like blind glass orbs.
The god Janus shows only a single eye on each double face.
I was a woman of that kind, one eye looking backward;
the other eye filmed, clouded, vision impaired, nothing
to see forward. I became a monster of their kind, savage
anger turned inward. No mountains to move; no seas
to scoop in the cupping of my hand. My single eye as big
as a wheel spinning, revolving, boring a hole in my forehead.
Known for their bulging eyes, Bettie Davis and Joan Crawford,
our celluloid models, determined, sarcastic, bitter women,
who could forge thunderbolts worthy of Zeus in the twinkling
of an eye. When I was young, I was an eye person of that kind.
Eye witness to disorder and destruction: fire in my eye, bold eye,
wild eye. Yes, I cast a fearful eye upon pain and panic: sharp eye;
cold eye; trembling eye. Be that as it may,
I approached middle age with an inward eye, believing eyes
a mirror of the soul: convinced I could maneuver the eye
of a needle; confident I could escape the Cyclops' cave
riding under the belly of a sheep.
