Blind Man's Buff Poem by David Lewis Paget

I remember as a child we used to
Play out in the square,
In the sleepy little village
Someone christened Uno Ware,
There was never any traffic so
Until we'd had enough,
With the cruelty of children
We'd keep playing Blind Man's Buff.

It was cruel, I admit it and
Regret the very day,
The first time we invited young
Immanuel to play,
He was Russian, and had come to live
From halfway round the earth,
He was always labelled ‘It' because
He'd been stone blind from birth.

His father, Andropovski was
An evil looking man,
But he'd fled before the Communists
Had come to rule the land,
He'd been in the Palace Guard, had
Given service to the Csar,
While the Bolsheviks had gathered,
He'd deserted, travelled far.

Immanuel was only nine
A stranger to the street,
He was not allowed to play with us
The urchins in bare feet,
But his father was a woodsman and
Away most every day,
So we gathered round his window,
Asked Immanuel to play.

We'd lead him out and spin him round
And say, ‘You're it! ' and stuff,
And he'd shriek and laugh and stagger
As we played our Blind Man's Buff,
But he very rarely caught us
We were far too quick for him,
‘Til his father, Andropovski,
Kicked our butts and took him in.

After that he stayed inside or
Came to sit out on the porch,
And he'd listen to us playing
We'd indulge in different sports,
Then he took a knife and whittled
Just to pass away the time,
And he made the most amazing things
For someone who was blind.

He'd get a picture in his head
Of what he'd never seen,
Then he'd whittle and he'd whittle
At the substance of his dream,
And they gradually got bigger as
He grew up in the dark,
He would whittle from huge logs
Once he had stripped away the bark.

I remember when he whittled
A whole lizard from the wood,
Well, it looked much like a lizard
I would watch him as he stood,
And he'd ask me lots of questions
About sizes and of shapes,
About elephants and zebras
About seagulls, terns and apes.

I would answer him directly
In exacting measurements,
Tell him how they moved, of hair and fur
Of food, and excrements,
I would draw him mental pictures
Of the things he'd never seen,
As his knife would chip and whittle,
And his face would fairly beam.

Then one day it just turned nasty
When a friend called Henry Goode,
Said he'd seen that wooden lizard
Snaking off into the wood,
So I asked Immanuel, I said:
‘I don't know what he's on,
But Henry saw your lizard move! '
Immanuel said: ‘It's gone! '

He never would expand on this,
He'd shrug and turn away,
But still his knife flashed in the air,
Would chip and strip away,
Then Mrs. Brown came screaming that
She'd been down by the wharf,
Had been accosted by some man,
She said, ‘A wooden dwarf! '

And that was just the start of it
A mist came swirling down,
So thick we couldn't find our way
Both in or out of town,
A flying wooden parrot then
Knocked off the Parson's hat,
And lay there squawking feebly ‘til
The Parson stamped on that.

I found Immanuel on the porch
And said, ‘Hey, what's the game? '
He scowled in my direction, said,
‘Don't like it? What a shame!
You thought it was good fun to tease,
Could never get enough,
When I was just the blind kid, ‘It',
And playing Blind Man's Buff! '

Our village faded from the map
That mist just kept us there,
And people whispered, ‘Where's it gone?
That village, you know where! '
Immanuel said we'd play again
That game we loved the most,
But we'd be ‘It', he'd whittled it,
Turned loose the Holy Ghost!