Mastery
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation.
You have only to watch his eyes;
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression, forgetting
themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
--W.H Auden
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation.
You have only to watch his eyes;
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression, forgetting
themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
--W.H Auden