I can't stop.

G.L. calls me—a blind man whom I met a couple of years back. He remembers my every word. The loneliness of the blind.

He’s freed from his loneliness by the word. Isn’t that the point of poetry? Breaking through the walls of solitude. Poetry is the great S.O.S. of loneliness.

G.S. tells me he is a beggar always pleading for human help.

I say, “I wish that you could see the world more clearly”—and suddenly realize the absurdity of my words. I’m speaking to a blind man.

He takes my hand. He sees only with his hand.

“Mercy flows through touch alone,” from my poem “Body.”