In sunlight like fine-grained wood, in lamplight

dark as the peasant's loaf, eyes of the others, dark as the soil

I look to see lining my grave, eyes of the difference;

bruised and slitted with sleep her eyes are the black tilted eyes

of Troy-haunted Tuscany, eyes of the strangers, in shadow

the heavy-lidded eyes of Moor-haunted Naples. Eyes of the South!

Eyes of the night, eyes different from the eyes

of my people that are blue

as the grinding Atlantic they were backed up against,

blue as the covering air that clamps itself

to the mouth of the hot dun earth

 

We want what we lack, we need

what is different, what to our selves is foreign:

what is missing. These eyes of the Mediterranean,

eyes of the little people,

how I wanted them, how they were different to me,

deep as the shade cast by cypresses

where the soft furtive waves lick the crumbling ancient coasts,

far down to Egypt drunk with palm wine and necromancy,

far down to Africa the All-mother

 

Dark-eyed Theresa, cat-skulled, slant-eared,

her thoughts move with her blood and her blood

moves with the moon, how I wanted her hands

cool as porcelain where mine are burning,

her skin suave where mine is rough; in her bent elbow

the bony mechanism compact and intricate

is there to be felt beneath the flesh, behind her somber gaze

is to be felt the pull of the center where all the scattered children

seek to return from their several frontiers. Eyes of the Old Cities!

 

How I wanted to see the moon move in those eyes,

how I wanted her, fine as I am coarse,

how I wanted to time the onrushing tidal bore

by the pulse in that slender wrist I gripped,

how I wanted her, brown-eyed Theresa, small and lovely and neat,

all that I am not, all that is different, all that is missing,

all that is needed