I have seen your eyes before. Many places, many times before. In the rude assembly, in the wasted alleys; in pasts afeared and presents bitter, in the madhouse, in the mirror. Yes, Master Bedlam, the fool knows well these parted eyes. Searching eyes, lost eyes; pained eyes, maimed eyes. Supplicant eyes, seditious eyes. Cackling, cracking, crying eyes. Mad eyes, but not, not a madman's eyes-is that what you wish me not to see? Do you throw me to the ground, hound me from your hovel, so that I cannot see? Cannot scry into your crystal eye and from therein the truth espy?
For I have seen your eyes anotherwhere. You will not remember. You will not remember the chapel on St. Swithin's day, how you squirmed in your father's corky arms, even from birth wary of touch. You will not remember how, though you beat and kicked and writhed with fury, you never once made a sound. Not even when the water and oil sluiced your tender head, nor when your godfather, my light, my life, wiped the excess from your staring eyes. Staring, yes. Staring at me, for all to see, though I was no motley spectacle then, naught but a natural fool in a house of God. You will not remember how only in my arms you lay still and calm.
After that, they say, you stared no more. Your eyes grew cowed and fickle, darting away, always away, to shadows. You sought shelter in the shadows from the strained auspices of your birth. And your own shadow, bastard brother loved too well, spurned your reflected light. Did you guess he tried to snuff it out? To start anew and rise amok, a phoenix tupping your dying embers?
I did not see all. But I saw enough. I see enough. I see it now in your eyes, that dull and muddled shade, the truth you hide in murky waters from your drowning self. In murky waters will not your own reflection lie, but a half-faced lie, assurance in the anonymity of Anyman. Who is Poor Tom but Anyman, Everyman? Every man you ever longed and ever failed to be? What is that Tom but a shadow, a shell: a vessel, to fill as pleases you? As befits, bests, you? Who are you?
The question claws at you, rends your soul asunder. I think it always has. But you will not find an answer in these stinking bowels of earth, this madman's mask; you will not find it in me. You should not look upon me and dare to dream of hope, for I am not his harbinger. I am but a shadow myself-not as you are forced to become but as you sought to make yourself, as you failed to make yourself. As I cannot help but be. Invisible, unless I will myself seen. Unremarkable, unless I will myself heard. The folly of our world given form, a motley mirror held constantly up to enjoin reflection.
This I am. I know myself always to be. This you are not. You are not burdened to be.
But you seek not to know what you are not. You seek what I cannot give, what on this earth naught but death will grant.
You seek whole eyes.