308 PART THREE
Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
Again again with its pointless sound
When the moon finds them they are the color of everythingAn uncanny accuracy pierces the verse, rain falling into eyes of the dead. Their
eyes are also open with some claim on us. What do we make of eyes “the color
of everything”?
Rumphius the blind seer of Ambon says “everything takes me by surprise,”
and Merwin says in an interview, “We don’t just look, we see. We don’t just
listen, we hear.” If anything in poems can make us really see and hear, it will
be—what Merwin saw in Rumphius speaks for himself as well—that “cease-
lessly attentive motion of his own mind.”