Pair of Eyes

If I could steal just one thing from the Met,

ferret it away with no one the wiser, I’d pocket

the gaze of two eyes made of marble, frit, and obsidian

lashed with bronze and set to float like butterflies pinned

under glass in the Room of Antiquities. Steady.

Intent.  As if never sundered or plucked from some stone-headed

god in a hilltop temple. As if still waking 

to long rows of gnarled olives and Mediterranean light breaking

over karst cliffs, light washing into sea grottos. 

One eye umbra, the other mint.  The astonished O

of the iris, unblinked.  An atheist in Catholic school,

I secretly added an extra o to God. Good was cool.

I was down with good. Glory be to good. I savored my extra 

O, tucked like magic beneath my tongue, vexed

to be different, soothed to be hooped, my two selves unsintered.

O ancient eyes in your museum case—you who knows no splinter

in the mind, no crack in the column, despite a flawed

world long crashed—draw me a sun soul. Draw me.

Published in The New Guard, Volume IX (2021)

Pair of eyes, Greek, 5th century BCE or later

Courtesy of The Met