“Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.”
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
"The Human Situation"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: And if this I were destroyed,
The image shattered,
My perceived, rent world would fly
In an explosion of final judgement
To the ends of the sky,
The colour in the iris of the eye.
Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.