Fixity

   ..

   How can it? O how can Love's eye be true,

   That is so vexed with watching and with tears?

   No marvel then though I mistake my view:

   The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

   ..

  

   The eye undergoes such sustained

   trial in the Sonnets that it was

   only polite of Shakespeare to ad-

   dress what gets in its way. That

   said, I'm practical enough to un-

   derstand, in the English renais-

   sance, that one could get into a

   very great deal of hot water, by

   being too certain of what heaven

   is. To cite it as crossing paths

   with sight is no less daring now

   than it was, then; yet if coming

   far, were to eclipse the Sonnets,

   security would seize their place.

   We know its gaze. It hasn't love;

   and of all the euphemisms author-

   itarianism has to answer for, it

   is the most basic, the most base.

    

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 148

  fragment

 1609

op. cit.

Aaron Lynch

Capetown

2014