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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476547" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Down By The River Again</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again<br>listening for stars to interrupt my solitude <br>like the first little nicks of rain to strike a windowpane, <br>I realize how much I prefer a magnanimous liar <br>to the tale of a man with a stingy truth<br>so much so I'm generous in my sorrow <br>with all things that suffer as I do<br>however dangerous and estranged <br>tomorrow might causally seem.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The latest casualty of a dream I had, <br>I sit down on a prophetic skull of an Olmec rock <br>surrounded by broken beer bottles, <br>that remind me of withered waterlilies in the fall<br>and the cracked shells of cosmic eggs <br>that took the plunge into the abyss <br>to test fly the flightfeathers of a new universe<br>like a baby sparrow on the edge of a nest in the abyss. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">My mindstream mingles with the night creek <br>and we both flow by like avatars of time <br>wondering what oceanic theme <br>we might be the tributaries of<br>as we watch the willows wash their roots<br>with their hair, and the stars <br>dip their lures in the water <br>to catch the silver fish that school on the moon<br>like a poet and a modest river <br>that can't find any room for their emotions <br>stranded on the earth like wingless waterbirds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, it's easier <br>to share my pain with a restless companion <br>in constant change like the moodring of the moon<br>than it is the meteoritic flash and bling <br>of the ceremonious cornerstones of life <br>who might give good advice to a building<br>like the Kaaba or the black Taj Mahal, <br>but know nothing about walking <br>on quicksand and water or stars<br>without sinking like most of the living <br>through the fathomless depths of their seeing.<br> <br>Or the aboriculture of the orchards of rootless trees<br>tasting the fruits of their wanderlust <br>like the sad sweetness of farewell on their tongues<br>as they pass through the gates of becoming <br>the same way they came yesterday <br>like sad poems falling from the wings of waterbirds.<br>Sacred syllables pearling off their feathers <br>like a windfall of pear-shaped tears in the moonlight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again I can dazzle my sorrow<br>with the beauty of a fleeting insight <br>into the nature of enlightened fireflies <br>that can light up the whole universe<br>in a single flash of compassion <br>for everything in passage that can't last <br>if it doesn't fall out of formation with the past<br>like Canada geese on a return journey<br>to the lakes and rivers that don't hang on <br>to their reflections in the well-thumbed holy books<br>of family albums any longer than it takes <br>for them to be on their way again <br>and gone, gone, gone, altogether gone beyond<br>the dark hills that keep their secrets to themselves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, I can commune <br>with all the burnt bridges of my long firewalks<br>through my nebulous heart trying to break into stars<br>so I can find my way home again <br>without consulting a starchart of fireflies <br>where X marks the spot of my biggest mistakes <br>when I knocked on a plague door from the inside <br>and the angel of death answered like a distant memory: <br>Get out. No one lives here anymore. <br> And the pain was almost more than I could bear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, I can let my dreams <br>and my nightmares alike flow downstream<br>like the blossoms of the moon or the feathers <br>of a my imaginative flight path into an oceanic awareness <br>there are no trees, there are no branches<br>there are no seas on the moon or in the abyss <br>and the waterbirds have nowhere to land, <br>nowhere to nest, not even the sprigs of peace <br>they carry in their beaks like divining rods<br>to anywhere within their starless wingspan. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, it's enough <br>that what I am answers to itself even <br>when the nightbird of my longing <br>comes looking for me like a rootless tree <br>it used to roost in like a voice from the past<br>that keeps mistaking me for someone<br>it's the foolishness of a sacred clown to still hope I am. <br>And what can I know about what I'm becoming <br>except it's the sum of all I've forgot<br>to keep pace with the flowing <br>where the shapeshifters wait at the river's turning <br>for a thought to tilt its wings up <br>in a good-bye remember me if you can <br>sloppy kind of salute or awkward bow<br>from all of us whose names <br>have been written on the wind and water in blood<br>to all those lightwaves and flash floods of the heart <br>standing at attention like a parade square <br>where war's never been declared<br>and head toward home like an arrow <br>that's lost its sense of direction<br>and falls like an illegal immigrant toward earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, where change<br>comes as effortlessly as the fallen leaf<br>of an apostate hymnal of protest songs, caught up in <br>the currents, the undertow, the vertigo, the delirium, <br>the rapids and vapid swamplands of time, <br>no one claims me, and nothing is mine<br>and there's a silence that screams <br>the birthright of my freedom at the stars<br>and holds up my severed umbilical cord <br>as proof I've escaped my immortal chains<br>and chosen this transient path, brief as it is, <br>of light and wind, root and rain, <br>the circuitous blossoming of the wild grapevines<br>wandering like dancing drunks all over the place<br>underneath the fruits by which we shall know them<br>like chandeliers of global streetlamps<br>shining like clusters of pearls in the Pleiades.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, contemplating the world <br>like an earthbound frog sitting on a cosmic lily pad, <br>feeling the ghost pains of old wounds <br>summoned to a seance of scars <br>like a retrograde excorcism of all life on Mars, <br>wondering if the surest proof <br>that life on earth first came here <br>from that angry libidinous planet <br>like a seed in the fist of a meteor, <br>is that life on earth has been at war ever since.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or if it's too much bliss, or a surfeit of sorrows <br>that keeps the bubbles of the multiverse <br>in the rivers I've followed into hyperspace like<br>the inconceivable tomorrows <br>of the lonely predecessor of my own dragon line <br>that's an affable familar with the same starmap on <br>the palm of my hand, as it holds<br>like the triune stigmata of serpent fire and snake-eyes<br>of two black pearls of wisdom and one mystic eclipse<br>of a new moonrise in the crescents of its triadic claws.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, where my wounds <br>attend night school in the lecture halls of my heart <br>and vast significance is explained away <br>with the whisper of a cool breeze, a gust of stars, <br>the flaring of a matchbook of daylilies, <br>goose-bumps on the bare arms of the river, <br>and the wild white iris doesn't disguise itself as a truce <br>when it's really a surrender, the sacred silence of the dusk <br>is animated by a cloud of unknowing gnats <br>that makes me wonder what they're the aura of <br>if not the rapture of love that surrounds <br>the same galaxy of cosmic insights and earthly emotions <br>my heart has been haunting for lightyears<br>like the distant lustre of Venus shining like nacreous dawn <br>under the heavy eyelids of the dusty sunset<br>nodding off like a spectrograph under the weight <br>of the longer wavelengths of the red poppies <br>it's been consulting all day like the green skulls <br>of gypsy fortune-tellers prophesying the death of stars <br>that go supernova like nocturnal nightlilies <br>along the riverways and dirt backroads of the Milky Way <br>like sleepwalkers in a dream lingering <br>over the darkening hills of the Lanark Highlands<br>like an extended metaphor for life, love, and death<br>that's been trying to keep pace with a sunflower <br>that blooms at midnight, without running out of breath. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down by the river again, where I can drown <br>in the endless baptismal fount of my own myth of origin, <br>without entering a womb like an unclean thing<br>asked to wash off the starmud of my afterbirth<br>like something dirty on the threshold of a shrine of life<br>I'm asked to leave outside and turn my back<br>on all the roads and dead end pilgrimages it took to get here, <br>I refuse to start any new incarnation with an act of betrayal, <br>and I won't sanctify a saint without lifting the curse <br>off an heretical dragon's back at the same time, <br>knowing that for every angel that falls from heaven <br>like rain to put this hell on earth out, <br>a demon rises from pandemonium up the burning ladders <br>of their skeletal remains like watersnakes <br>on the fire-escapes of emergency moonlight, <br>to get a rise out of heaven, and warm things up a bit<br>just to show it that wildflowers can bloom in fire as well<br>and it doesn't hold a monopoly on bells <br>that have been beaten out of the afterlives <br>of experienced swords that have been through the forge<br>like hot blood through the heart of a warrior poet<br>who's gone absent without permission <br>like the rogue star of a conscientious objector for good<br>from nightwatch in the guardhouse at the gates of Eden.</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=476547" data-title="Down By The River Again de Patrick White" data-description="Down by the river again
listening for stars to interrupt my solitude 
like the first little nicks of rain to strike a windowpane, 
I realize how much I prefer a magnanimous liar 
to the tale of a man with a stingy truth
so much so I'm generous in ..."></div>
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