Unit 3 Section 2Exercise 4The body disabledBlindness
Read The kindness of the blind by Wislava Szymborkska. The poem is about a poet reading aloud to a blind person (perhaps as a volunteer in a nursing home). While you are reading, think of the poet as a physician and what parallels there might be between the poet’s and the physician’s entry into the patient’s experience. Then answer the discussion questions below. See also Annotation
Wislava Szymborkska, The kindness of the blind
A poet is reading to the blind.
He did not suspect it was so hard.
His voice is breaking.
His hands are shaking.
He feels that here each sentence
is put to the test of the dark.
It will have to fend for itself,
without the lights or colors.
A perilous adventure
for the stars in his poems,
for the dawn, the rainbow, the clouds, neon lights, the moon,
for the fish until now so silver under water,
and the hawk so silently in the sky.
He is reading—for it is too late to stop—
of a boy in a jacket yellow in the green meadow,
of red rooftops easy to spot in the valley,
the restless numbers on the players’ shirts,
and a nude stranger in the door cracked open.
He would like to pass over—though it’s not an option—
all those saints on the cathedral’s ceiling,
that farewell wave from the train window,
the microscope lens, ray of light in the gem,
video screens, and mirrors, and the album with faces.
Yet great is the kindness of the blind,
great their compassion and generosity.
They listen, smile and clap.
One of them even approaches
with a book held topsy-turvy
to ask for an invisible photograph.
Study questions
- This poem is written from the perspective of the poet. In what way is it about the blind person’s experience? Read the following excerpt from an article on Helen Keller published in The New Yorker: “The wordless child she [Helen Keller] once was, he maintained, was closer to reality than what her teacher had made of her through the imposition of ‘word-mindedness.” He objected to her use of images such as ‘a mist of green,’ ‘blue pools of dog violets,’ ‘Soft clouds tumbling.’ All that, he protested, was ‘implied chicanery’ and a ‘birthright sold for a mess of verbiage.’” (June 16 and 23, 2003) Keller, according to this article, was accused at times of being a ‘fraud’ for using imagistic language, naming things she had no visual knowledge of. How does this add to your understanding of the poem? What does the attitude tell you about ways of thinking about the disabled?
- Think of the language of the poem: according to the poem, poetry is full of rich visual images. What else does the poem suggest, and discover, that poetry can achieve with language? What does the role of language in poetry have to do with the language of medicine? See Unit 1 The art and science of medicine, especially McCann on language
- What function do the phrases ‘it is too late to stop’ and ‘it’s not an option’ have?
- What do you think of the title of the poem? Discuss the ending, describing the blind audience’s reactions. Aside from being merely polite and responding within social conventions, what might be the blind audience’s experience listening to the poem? What is the difference between the response the poet fears and the blind listener’s actual experience, in your opinion? Can you apply your thoughts to a situation that might occur with a patient?
Link : Unit 8 Cross-cultural communication
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