Ulysses' gaze
"Is this really the first movie, the first look?"
TO VLEMMA TOU ODYSSEA
Perhaps not all knowledge begins
in your eyes. Perhaps, when my look becomes
a look, there's nobody responsible for it,
nobody in charge. Perhaps they're
my eyes, used to distance, blind from
so much looking, the ones that don't know
how to fit in this fragment of delirium,
this new and illegible face that clings
to the disarray of images. Perhaps, hoping
for a child's look that reinvents all things
(a gaze capable of giving shape to chaos),
I'm not aware of the urgency of the present,
of the now of my eyes, of the value and limits
of metaphor. If I am a collector of far gone
looks, why am I unable to imagine hands
that are forgetting me now,
to find again the innocence
of one who is looking for the first time?
I don't know where I'm going. I often thought
I knew.
Ithaca is my destination but the journey goes on.
(Poem translated by D. Sam Abrams)
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