This is one of several poems in an ill-fated “alphabet series.” I never got much past “H’ and though most of the poems didn’t turn out interestingly, I salvaged a few, some of them re-titled, for this collection.
B is for Blind
The fault is in the Quill; I have mended it
and still it is very much inclined to make blindes
Letter, John Keats to Fanny Brawne, February 1820
O imperfect tool of the ball
and the socket, screwed into darkness
of blind alley, blind corner, over
the shoulder of the blind spot
winking out in the sun.
Is it blind faith in the blind hand
of some game of chance or fate,
the blind trust in a comrade
or thief robbing you blind?
Were you blind and now you see?
Consider Keats, bloom of blood
in his chest widening like a dark pupil,
staring into the mind’s blind eye, then
dipping the pen that blots each letter’s
balloon into blindness: but still
the bright star yet undimmed.
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