On Her Blindness
Adam Thorpe
My mother could not bear being blind,
to be honest. One shouldn’t say it.

One should hide the fact that catastrophic
handicaps are hell; one tends to hear,

publicly from those who bear it
like a Roman, or somehow find joy

in the fight. She turned to me, once,
in a Paris restaurant, still not finding

the food on the plate with her fork,
or not so that it stayed on (try it

in a pitch-black room) and whispered,
“It’s living hell, to be honest Adam.

If I gave up hope of a cure, I’d bump
myself off.” I don’t recall what I replied,
but it must have been the usual sop,
inadequate: the locked-in son.

She kept her dignity, though, even when
bumping into walls like a dodgem; her sense

of direction did not improve, when cast
inward. “No built-in compass,” as my father

joked. Instead, she pretended to
ignore the void, or laughed it off.

Or saw things she couldn’t see
and smiled, as when the kids would offer

the latest drawing, or show her their new toy
– so we’d forget, at times, that the long,

slow slide had finished in a vision
as blank as stone. For instance, she’d continued

to drive the old Lanchester
long after it was safe

down the Berkshire lanes. She’d visit exhibitions,
admire films, sink into television
while looking the wrong way.
Her last week alive (a fortnight back)

was golden weather, of course,
the autumn trees around the hospital

ablaze with colour, the ground royal
with leaf-fall. I told her this, forgetting,

as she sat too weak to move, staring
at nothing. “Oh yes, I know,” she said,

“it’s lovely out there.” Dying has made her
no more sightless, but now she can’t

pretend. Her eyelids were closed
in the coffin; it was up to us to believe

she was watching, somewhere, in the end.
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2018, titled "On Her Blindness", by artist "Adam Thorpe".