Another in my series (?) of poems about phenomenologists.

Merleau-Ponty’s Ocular Body

Aristotle’s illustration

In the De Anima:

Imagine that the eye were a whole organism—

Then sight would be its soul.

A good enough illustration, I suppose,

In context.

But then you read Merleau-Ponty,

You watch him strain to see, see,

To see with his entire body, his integral being,

And you do not have to imagine anything:

Sight is his soul.