Note to “The Eye”

“The Eye” is, in some sense, an autobiographic poem triggered by the adult memory of a childhood event. Curiously enough, events of an autobiographic nature have rarely a direct, explicit presence in what I write, being rather there in an indirect and elusive way, whenever the past allows for some enrichment of what is written.

My father was drafted to the army in the 60’s, when Portugal was involved in a colonial war and posted as a doctor in Mozambique. Some months later, my mother, my siblings and I joined him. We lived there for about 2 years.

I was 6/7 years old and one of the main interests was a playground where were made available for the children military transport vehicles too old for any other use.

I remember one day seeing an eye peeking through a hole, as I was climbing to the rear of a truck. I stood still for a while, not approaching it nor running away, fascinated by its emotionless, unblinking stare, till I moved away, called by some other game.

I heard shouts some minutes later and saw the caretakers running towards us with sharp sticks on their hands poking with them the hole where the eye had been. I saw moments later the dark body of the snake being taken away. It was a deadly snake, we were told. I felt, by then, fascination and curiosity.

Fear only came later as time made me realise the danger, however remote it might have really been, and time itself coloured memory, turning the unblinking eye into something else, something of an unnatural dimension that visited my childhood nightmares again and again. With them came an image of evil as a stare devoid of feeling and emotion that needs not doing anything to be what it is.

The Eye