Before the Cataract Operation
after Lisel Mueller
I’ve heard it said that Claude Monet
refused the very operation I’m soon to have.
They’ll cut away the thickened lenses
on my eyes, that blur the outlines
of my instruments and measuring devices,
and turn the colors of the garden liquid,
fantastically melding hue into light
in just the way a painter might desire.
I, myself, am secretly reluctant to lose
this view of a world without dimensions
and boundaries, formulas turned to hieroglyphics,
charts and graphs become unruly as abstract designs.
No wonder Monet wanted to preserve a vision
of reality so alien to science, yet so filled
with surreal and glorious metaphor:
gas street lamps as angels, the Rouen
cathedral built of shafts of sun,
the meeting of sky and water indistinguishable.
I stop myself from thinking of a world
blurred into loveliness.
I am a scientist, not a painter.
I will go forward with the surgery
that will restore the sharpness of my vision
and my singular way of looking
upon the complex objects of my work.
