The Blind Man monologue — Plays by August Strindberg, First Series

I cannot see, but I hear. I hear the anchor bill claw the clay bottom as when the hook is torn out of a fish and brings up the heart with it through the neck--My son, my only child, is going to journey across the wide sea to foreign lands, and I can follow him only in my thought! Now I hear the clanking of the chain--and--there is something that snaps and cracks like clothes drying on a line--wet handkerchiefs perhaps. And I hear it blubber and snivel as when people are weeping--maybe the splashing of the wavelets among the seines--or maybe girls along the shore, deserted and disconsolate--Once I asked a child why the ocean is salt, and the child, which had a father on a long trip across the high seas, said immediately: the ocean is salt because the sailors shed so many tears into it. And why do the sailors cry so much then?--Because they are always going away, replied the child; and that is why they are always drying their handkerchiefs in the rigging--And why does man weep when he is sad? I asked at last--Because the glass in the eyes must be washed now and then, so that we can see clearly, said the child.