Concerning the Blind Man

  The sempiternal blind man was on the steps, once again in tune to some clock independent of the sun. Taylor stopped. “Do you know daylight and shadow?” he asked. “I mean, how do you know it’s day?”
  The musician quit playing, and stared in the direction of the voice. “They say that people with no eyes can see things from another sense,” he said after a moment. “It’s a crock of shit, kid, makes ‘em feel better ‘bout themselves. But my grandmother, she always said that Love and Hate were twin babies, sep’rated at birth, and yet still sometimes blendin’ together as they can’t deny the truth of their union. And they know each other as you know ‘em. Daylight’s about like that.”
  “Oh.” Digested that. “I wondered.”
  “How did you know it, kid? Light refracting on the retina all there is to it, man? Or is it deeper? What is light?”
  Taylor considered. “Twin babes,” he said. “Recognition.”
  The blind man grinned like the sun, and began to play again. Taylor walked on, toward the end of the city.