Life Lessons

Between Looking and Seeing

Felix Dennis
March 28, 2005
Mandalay, Mustique
Unpublished
Arrow
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Between looking and seeing— the difference
Is the wilfully blind choose not to see—
Empires of images furnish no sense:
A city, a park and a veteran tree;
The rain-sodden bark in the slant of the sun,
The purple and gold of an emperor’s cloak,
The leaf-litter wasps whose duty is done
Shredding their wings on the skin of an oak,
Herringbone bricks stained café-au-lait,
The sulphurous spread of the sun as it dies,
Mosaics of rust in ochre and grey—
All of it lost to indifferent eyes.
   In the fog of our living and blank ennui,
   With all of us looking— so few of us see.