Watcher (based on AE’s ‘Watcher’ in the Ulster Museum)

by ​Daniel Sofaer

Photo credit: National Museums NI

The sky above him has eyes of its own. 
The light that gathers in the pool 
is on the watcher’s mind 
because he is wearing turquoise blue. 
If he hadn’t turquoise blue, the mountains behind would not be pink, and his blue mind 
would not have known how to sink 
into that luminous pool, snaking towards
us at the very edge of time. 

Watcher, crouched you, blank-faced  
\except the barely glimpsed eye, 
why do you wear blue? 
I am a berry, juice of the sky. 

Watcher, what say you of the blue? 
Go when ready. I will follow you. 

Follow me? I wear no green, agreed-upon 
garb of the peasantry. 

O AE, 
only a poet could have painted this badly. 
If he’d known how to paint too well 
the watcher could not have sat at his well. 

Oh bother the great paintings anyhow! 
Darkness rests on purple field. 

On purple field the darkness rests.
Watcher, who the hell are you? 

My sky is tawny with exploding cloud. 

He cannot see the source of light; we think we
do. The watcher cannot see the source of light,
only its reflection in the pool. 
We can, if we choose, embrace the sky, or
​watch the watcher, watching at his pool.