In the village was a man with no face— some mishap with dynamite. I remember the shock of him out in the lane like anyone else, pushing a wheelbarrow like anyone else, standing like any other man with other men, his eyes looking out, though I never met them with mine.
I never asked after his story and do not recall his voice, for he must have had a voice that spoke of what his eyes had seen. I never learned how he could eat or drink with that cratered face, nor do I recall learning his name.
He comes to mind now that my own face is as absent to me as a fissure in time, my eyes filled by all I have seen. Not that his misfortune was in any way a metaphor, only that he might have known what I must learn now, what I cannot retract or unsay and all I will never see and how it is to become only my ears and eyes as a seed has eyes, sending its shoots into the air.