The Final Victim, Whose Eyes Were Removed and Photographed for Images of the Ripper s Face Men again, poking at my eyes, hopeful at first but finding themselves their only devils looking back from black glass. He, though, had hoped to find himself. In the street, my hand dead-right inside his trousered thigh, had hoped to find his triumph, his man's pride in my woman's cowed and downcast eyes. I laughed, my head back, my eyes I'd suppose as dead in that gassy light as his. Blood is nothing.
Words are nothing.
My eyes give nothing mine. It's he, it's they must go on seeing what they have to see. That is how they used to get them, dead men folded up in big barrels and shipped South, rubbing around inside like some unborn child. I had to help with, pull him out, white thing, leaking brine, his teeth showing. From Philadelphia, they said, white men poking at him, pleased, and him just lying there, his eyes closed, nothing much but bones.