As blind potato eyes in darkness sprout, the eye
Hatched before the dawn of light, not knowing why.

What, if not touch, could give it such necessity
To reach through darkness till the light was born to see?

Home was good, food was good, fed through the gut.
Space was seamless, warm, and humming. Time held. But

Touch thrust up, and opening length and breadth and height
Before it, moved among them in a field of light,

Till grits of seeds their cases burst, and flowers sprang,
And all their atoms, in the light of morning, sang:

“What though no mercy called us forth, no greater eye
Regards us or takes notice when we droop and die?

“We praise, with all our tingling particles and quarks,
Whatever programmed us and runs through us and works.”

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 4 Number 3, on page 31
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https://newcriterion.com/issues/1985/11/the-eye-egg