Mortal Cataracts

What futile webs our journeys weave

When seeking faces, door to door,

Small comfort for some desperate need

To set adrift the sorcerer.

The mirror mocks the memory’s eye

The camera captures petty truth

In search of you, the greater lie

Will lie in all I brought you to.

 

Long waits the man I left behind

Becalmed on some embattled sea,

Since conscience caught his blinkered mind

And left him, contradictory.

I’ve never lived the play I wrote

Nor caught the curtain in one act,

The blind are blind and so am I

Behind these mortal cataracts!

 

David Lewis Paget