The Seer

The man was white, grey and pale brown,

the colorless colors of a used-up earth

where water has sunk down,

sunk down so low and risen

so far above the grey-white pale-brown heaven

and shrunk so far within itself

that it will not come back. What can moisten

a shriveled water, or can a clod of ash

regain colors from the identical howl

of a white powder sun?

Not in me, he said,

ever again, but in the street

with engine and worker petals, not papery,

more fragile than that, there will be color.

My eye will reach color, all colors, every one

together, which no one will see in me

ever again.

I turned to the sky then

and it was all one blue, the color of seeing,

and yet was as many blues, as subtle,

as tones of stubble in the most sunken cheek.