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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476481" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>And You Shall Forever Be</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you shall forever be <br>all that could not be said of me <br>though I spoke for myself as long as I could <br>to answer your absence in paint and words<br>like this night creek talking in tongues to itself.<br>I see the maple leaves rotting in manuscript<br>like the dead civilization of a mummified language <br>that never made it into print. <br>And though I know every name <br>of the wildflowers that did, and of the stars, <br>their perennial myths of origin, <br>and of the fireflies, their efflorescent haikus, <br>tonight I walk among bones and pelvises of ice, <br>the desecration of forms, limbs lobbed off <br>like the right arms of offended trees and the eyes <br>of small skulls plucked out like stillborn moons<br>that never made it through the winter. <br>Alone with this emptiness which yet remains <br>the biggest clue I've ever found <br>to the whereabouts of myself, <br>I am not estranged by my usual compassion<br>for outcast things with no voice of their own.<br>There is no pillow of snow over the mouth <br>of what can't be said without me.<br>The dead don't hold their fingers <br>up to their lips to bid me keep silent. <br>They're all dancing wildly to lyrics of their own <br>in a winter carnival of deathmasks <br>that have shed their bodies <br>like the hags of the withered waterlilies <br>trying to wash the brown out of their gowns <br>like sunspots from the memory of the stars. <br>As if there were an eloquence <br>in the radiance of their rags<br>that overwhelmed the silence<br>with the sacred syllables of a mother-tongue <br>that has no word for time or death.<br>No word for life that distinguishes them from me. <br>Not just moonlight on the barkless limbs of mannequins <br>that have shed their skin seductively.<br>Not the dead of a northern Pompey<br>frozen in ash and ice and snow<br>catastrophically posed for generations to come<br>but the hymns of the homeless <br>who've finally found common ground<br>with the tent cities of the stars high overhead<br>and the gypsy moths in the Dutch elms.<br>The long vowels of the living joining hands <br>with the skeletal consonants of the dead<br>to make one whole word we can say in our sleep<br>like a secret we keep between ourselves.<br>And for the moment I feel almost complete here <br>like the first draft of a book <br>that the dead have yet to rewrite. <br>And though I've said it thousands of times before <br>in as many ways as I was inspired to, <br>like a fire that reared up at the mere shadow of the whip <br>to outrun the starlight for the sheer spirit <br>of challenging the will of this body <br>dug like a spur in its own ribs, <br>it was clear from the very beginning, <br>as clear as poppies and marigolds <br>in the summer of their oral traditions, <br>no more can be said in the dead of winter <br>than can be said by the living <br>to coax the wild crocuses out in spring.<br>You might be a lone night bird <br>that inhabits the woods like a magus <br>with too many stars to follow <br>to follow any one of them<br>and gratify your life by stargazing <br>and calling the faithful to prayer <br>like a muezzin in the morning <br>with the voice of an underground river.<br>And for all your lucidity you might never find <br>the long shadows of your ancestors <br>erecting the waterlilies of their tents <br>along the riverbanks of those rivers and lifelines<br>you keep returning to every year like waterbirds.<br>Or you could find no sign of anyone <br>for light years who could recognize you <br>for who you are even as you change time-zones<br>like a child with ageing eyes <br>who was raised by the alone with the Alone <br>in an incomprehensible solitude that included everyone. <br>Here where distinctions break down <br>and the dead and the living both draw <br>from the same source as they've always done <br>each is known to the other<br>by attributes that neither of them have.<br>The warm heart of a black rose <br>looking back over its shoulder<br>at a bend in the night creek, <br>the moon rising up over the valley, <br>a pearl in partial eclipse, <br>taking one long, last look <br>at the broken cages of ghostly tree limbs<br>and shattered ladders of lifeboat wing bones<br>that drowned on the way to their own rescue. <br>Is one side of a window truer than another? <br>Inner and outer, I and the other <br>truly separated by this mere hole in my eye? <br>Do the stars streaming through my mind <br>feel a subtle change in the nature of the sky <br>when they do, a different feel to the darkness, <br>something strange about the flowers <br>they open like loveletters, sensing someone <br>has been tampering with their mail<br>as if the message were still the medium <br>but with a different return address? <br>Is my absence any less baffling than my presence? <br>These with the hearts of departed things <br>any less whole or real or displaced <br>or death any less of a prelude to time <br>than any other point in its passage is? <br>Even in death, even when the sun <br>shines at midnight it's always dawn. <br>The waterbirds go. The waterbirds come back. <br>Like an ongoing dialogue in an hourglass<br>where content is the same as timing<br>and the most enduring of things<br>are the things that most readily pass<br>between the bright vacancy <br>and dark abundance of life <br>like the moon that keeps growing <br>without coming or going like a journey <br>standing in the doorway <br>of its own unending threshold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Patrick+White">Patrick White</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476481" data-title="And You Shall Forever Be de Patrick White" data-description="And you shall forever be 
all that could not be said of me 
though I spoke for myself as long as I could 
to answer your absence in paint and words
like this night creek talking in tongues to itself.
I see the maple leaves rotting in manuscript
li..."></div>
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