I have a vast traumatic eye
set in my forehead center 
that tortures to its own design 
all images that enter 

Conceiving menace in the green 
beneficence of warmth and light 
it cries alarm into the heart
and moves the hand to strike. 

By fall of night all who were near
are put to flight or slain: 
the eye, dilated still with fear, 
commands an empty plain. 

Then slowly as the golden horns
sound further in dispersion, 
inward does the Cyclops eye
revolve on dull aversion, 

Inward where the heart stripped bare
of enemy and lover 
returns a burning, foxlike stare
till darkness films it over. 


Tennessee Williams is recognized as one of the most important American playwrights of the 20th Century. He is the author of such classics as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). Williams, however, began his literary career with the ambition of earning fame as a poet, and he continued to think of himself as a poet for the rest of his life. He published two volumes of verse in his lifetime: In the Winter of Cities (1956) and Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977). New Directions published The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams in 2002.