What it’s really like to have cataract surgery

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes was gazing at two moons in the sky – until a hospital appointment helped her see the woods for the trees

EYES

During lockdowns a crumpled membrane turned my world

Into a screwed-up newspaper that I could not read.

After a left-eye vitrectomy and cataract surgery

I thought that I was out of the woods

Because I could see the trees.

But now the right eye owns the two moons of an astigmatism

That doubles vision. My paintbrush hovers its dual tips

Over my canvas, not certain of which twin branches,

Twin leaves, or twin boulders, to add another brush stroke to.

With the other eye deteriorating, I’d now squint into fog

That drained the colour from my landscape,

Bleaching the sky, my studio, my whole life.

I’d reach out to touch what I could not properly see.

My memory of the clarity of edges receded like a tide;

Contact lenses and glasses could not correct it until

This week a laser was applied. The sudden intensity of colour

Was like unlocking a door. So next,

The surgeon will remove the sepia world

Of my right lens. Long distance, he says is attainable,

And so is the single moon that I am reaching for.