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Saccade

By Stephen Edgar b. 1951 Stephen Edgar

They have no sense of what they’re looking at,

Unless the object moves.

(Or so he’s read; who knows if that’s the case?)

A painted bird’s an empty analogue

To the oblivious cat.

And it is not his still familiar face

So much as that distinctive gait which proves

The master to his dog,

Who frolics for him like an acrobat.

His eyes need movement too, but make their own.

His most fixated gaze—

On one small figure in a Bruegel scene,

Or on the camber of his lover’s lip

He worships unbeknown,

As though no time or change will supervene—

Aflicker with saccade, adjusts and strays

Minutely to equip

His mind to take in what is being shown.

And maybe consciousness employs saccade

As well, and flickers back

And forth, now in the world, now, briefly, out—

The way the gum tree’s canopy overhead

Flickers with light and shade,

So every leaf is momently in doubt—

Its faith saved by such intermittent lack

From being surfeited,

Its constant sense being constantly unmade.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2010).

Biography

Stephen Edgar was born in Sydney, Australia. He studied classics and English at the University of Tasmania and has worked as an editor and a librarian. He is the author of the poetry collections Queuing for the Mudd Club (1985), Ancient Music (1988), Corrupted Treasures (1995), Where the Trees Were (1999), Lost in the Foreground (2003), Other Summers (2006), and History of the Day (2009). A lyric formalist, Edgar probes the . . .

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