The Blind Wizard 


The blind wizard walks the streets of The Ancient City, 
With guide birds singing directions 
In a language only he and they know.   
He doesn't look wizard-like: 
His robes are plain, devoid of magical symbols he will never see,  
And his magic wand doubles as a cane 
To feel his way along.  

Strangers gasp in horror at his face, 
Its empty sockets like twin caves 
Within which nameless beasts may be hiding, 
Waiting to pounce upon the unwary.    
He will not say who or what took his eyes.  

But eyes or no eyes, his world is not one of darkness 
When one of the sockets holds an eye-stone. 

One is a gray pearl,
A gift from the gods of the ocean.  
As an eye it shows him the wonders of the sea, 
Shipwrecks and lost treasure and the bones of lost sailors,
And the strange creatures that live 
In the eternal darkness of the deepest depths.  

A sphere wrought from meteorite iron reveals the depths of space: 
Worlds around stars whose light will not reach us
For thousands and thousands of years.  
Strange are the ways of those who inhabit those worlds, 
Beyond even the ability of wizards to describe.  

Still other eye-stones look into the distant past, 
Or the tree of possible futures, 
Or the mazes of might-have-been,
While others open into the realms of the spirits, 
Or give form to the musings of mathematicians,
Or warn of evil in the hearts of others.  

None see the physical here-and-now.  
That the gods have forbidden.  
In a way that may be fortunate.  

Those who have met the wizard's wife 
Say that her face is even more horrible to look upon than his.  
He has been spared that affront to his senses, 
While his favorite eye-stone, 
The one that lets him see past the physical shell,
Delights him with the inner beauty of her soul.  


                                        -- Thomas G. Digby
                                        Written 22:32 04/04/2002
                                        Revised 07:37 04/05/2002
                                        Revised 17:08 04/10/2002
                                        Revised 15:34 06/19/2002