For Don Paterson
He preferred his glass eye to be of itself,
vitreous not ocular
or even optically convincing.
Without pupil or iris, allowed to risk
its stubbornly fluid nature,
the blue held everything.
It liquefied in candlelight
and clouded over in winter.
Once, at the opera, an aria
built wave upon wave of sound,
higher and closer till it struck
the resonant frequency
of blue glass
and the molecules of his eye
oscillated into a thousand flowers.
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