after Montaigne

It was summer, its rigors less forgiving then than
winter’s cold curse. Besides discomfort
of heat, less easily remedied than its opposite,
besides the sun’s pulse clanging in my head,
my eyes were pained by any dazzling light.

To deaden the whiteness of paper in a time
when reading was all in all to me, I could lay
a piece of clear glass on my book and find relief.
But now it’s only with spectacles that I can see
as clearly as I ever did, as far as most men,

though as night comes on I feel a blur beginning
while I read—reading, a trial that has always
tired my eyes, especially at night, if in
subtler ways. So heres a step backward, just
barely perceptible. And Ill draw back another

and yet another, from the second to the third,
from the third to the fourth, so quietly
that Ill have to be a confirmed blind man at last
before the ol ...

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