What Others See Poem by gershon hepner

What others see as “you, ” not “me, ”
is that which you can never view,
for when you look behind you see
what changes to “in front of you, ”
while I am always far behind
the person whom you see projected;
you ought to keep this well in mind
when by your eyes I am dissected.


Italo Calvino, in a close reading of a poem of Montale, focuses on the poet's preoccupation with the space behind us as we walk because we have not got eyes in the back of our heads and which we cannot see because, by turning our heads, we change its location (Michael Wood, reviewing Italo Calvino's 'Eyes Wide Open' (Pantheon) in The New York Review of Books, March 9,2000) .

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