Victor McConnell
The One-Eyed Man
In the land of the blind
the one-eyed man is not king.
He describes his visions,
the world he sees, out there,
through his blinking eye.
Blue sky, green leaves, dark soil.
The people listen at first.
Some are entertained.
Some even believe him.
But, after a while,
after enough spins of the Earth,
during which they do not
see the sky or the forests or the dirt,
they shout him down.
Sound alone can’t silence him,
and when they run their fingers across his face,
they feel his open eye, blinking,
rotating in its socket,
and it frightens them.
He invents tests that prove he can see,
predicting an object’s location in the darkness
that they can reach out and touch.
It’s not enough for them, though,
and they call it trickery.
After the umpteenth test,
the one he designs that he thinks
will convince them
beyond the shadow of a doubt
that he can see and is telling the truth,
they hold him down and pin his arms to the floor.
Then they heat a spoon in open flame
until it glows black and red,
like ancient fire—
fire that they cannot see.
Then they scoop out his eyeball,
pushing humanity’s last periscope
beneath the water,
and, as he screams then weeps,
the elders tell the community
that now, finally,
they can live in peace.
