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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476578" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>First The Tenderness</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">First the tenderness; I feel the tenderness, <br>	the downy edge of the leaf, the eyelash, <br>		the green tooth of the leaf <br>gently opening its mouth to the air, <br>	its flag of being high in the branches <br>		unfurling like a sky of its own, <br>startled by the taste of the first star.<br>	Every dropp of rain that falls <br>		is a jester's cap, <br>three bells and a splash and that's me<br>	learning how to swim in this new space <br>		with an ark and a flood, you<br>the dove with the leaf in its beak, returning.<br>	Then I check a little calendar of razor-blades<br>		to see if any of the days <br>are holy days circled in my blood, <br>	if I'm late for a sacrifice somewhere, <br>		if there's a landmine waiting <br>like a spiny sea urchin buried in the sand, <br>	glass petals shed from a broken rose, <br>		waiting for me to take my boots off <br>and walk barefoot dazzled along your shore. <br>	You are honey and wheat, and, angry, <br>		a small storm that bleachs lightning white. <br>Brave despite myself, <br>	your beauty crowns me King of Fools, <br>		and though I meant to disguise my helplessness<br>by standing my ground like a iron thorn, <br>	I can already feel the earth turning to quicksand <br>		beneath my feet, <br>and tremors of an approaching earthquake <br>	that might heave me up out of the sea <br>		like a new mountain.<br>And it's too early to tell<br>	if it's demons or angels <br>		that prod my heart <br>with their taunting spears of fire, <br>	or if they're just bored, <br>		hanging out on call, <br>like a gang of crows<br>pecking at the seed <br>		I left hope against hope on the moon, <br>but to judge from the way I feel <br>	like a new element <br>		discovered first on the sun, <br>all my cells and molecules assuming <br>	a new paradigm, a new mandala, <br>		a new configuration of shining, <br>an unknown constellation in the doorway, <br>	through either end of the telescope, <br>		they seem to mean business. <br>Fear rolls out its black carpet <br>	and blood rolls out its red, <br>		but only love walks freely in the starfields, <br>making its own path in the going<br>	and when I think of you, <br>		I pale like a planet <br>in the labyrinths of a shadowless dawn, <br>	I am the toy of tides of light, <br>		a rootless island<br>broken like bread <br>	from the continent I thought I was.<br>		Unless broken from the whole loaf <br>nothing can be shared, and nothing <br>	can feed the heart <br>		that has not been broken <br>among the hands of the hungry. <br> 	I have seen you as a harvest day in September, <br>		your pulse a windfall of poppies and apples, <br>your radiance, flying fish <br>	and water goblets shattered translucently on the wave, <br>		a white mare in the mirror trampling a glass serpent, <br>you were the pure blue of a troubled morning <br>	melting the first frost <br>		on the wild, New England asters <br>that bloomed among the grounded planets <br>	of an abandoned apple tree<br>		somewhere in New Hampshire; <br>I thought you were a window of honey <br>	saturated in its own light, <br>		that only the rarest of eyes <br>that came like bees back to the hive of your heart <br>	could look through. <br>		Now the moon is out. Now <br>I see the ghost of the water-lily ride the darkness <br>	like the soul of a doomed ship <br>		unloading its cargo in the depths, <br>or the second blue moon in October <br>	silvering the fields <br>		it threshes with a blessing. <br>First, the tenderness; I feel the tenderness <br>	overwhelm me in gentle enigmas <br>		of fireflies and small eclipses, <br>random ignitions of the mystery <br>	that this should be so at all, <br>		and it's as if I could stand beside my heart <br>astounded by the course of its flowing <br>	as all its rivers run suddenly down to you <br>		like a sea on the moon, <br>and like the feathers of a stormbird <br>	every sail, every burning paper lifeboat, <br>		every next breath <br>is a longing off your unmapped coast<br>	and a lighthouse of reason <br>		bawling its warning into the fog <br>that the star that guides my spirit luminously ignores. <br>	And though my ignorance at this juncture<br>		is a stairwell of wind at a crossroads<br>and I approach you like a tuning fork <br>	trying to harmonize my ashes <br>		like the urn of a burnt guitar <br>to sing to you out of the shadows of a summer night, <br>	to touch you with leaves and stars, <br>		to lace the air with the black fragrance <br>of smouldering roses alluring as the wine of a drunk mystic, <br>	and the beast putting on <br>		his brightest golden chain and collar<br>to greet your progress through his zoo of desires, <br>	slowly I raise my fingertips to your secret braille of scars <br>		to read the contours of the kells <br>you have elaborated from your suffering; <br>	the symmetries of passion and solitude, <br>		blood and tears<br>that ink the mingling of your silent scripture <br>	in the shrine of your deepest intimacy.<br>		First, the tenderness, I feel the tenderness <br>of a bridge for its stream, <br>	of a fountain on the sun <br>		watching a new comet <br>rinse the darkness out of its hair with light, <br>	of a tree for its chandelier of ripe cherries<br>		glowing brighter than blood in the night. <br>And I may be junkmail <br>	on the doorstep to the threshold of your heart, <br>		a wizard shy of magic, <br>or a kite tangled like a misplaced note <br>	in a stave of humming powerlines, <br>		and I've fallen <br>on the thorns and swords and obelisks <br>	of my delusions more than once, <br>		lost like a single straw in a stack of needles, <br>drowned diving <br>for tiny moons in hard shells on the bottom, <br>	and no one grows fat on the feast<br>in a crumb of light, <br>	and a rumour of love<br>		is not the burning bush <br>of prophecy and inspiration in the valley of a woman, <br>	and you are not the blue love letter<br>		of an atmosphere I could take for granted, <br>but I risk slipping myself under your horizon<br>	like the wingspan<br>		of a homing bird in the dusk, <br>risk stepping out from the trees into the open <br>	to drink from your reflection <br>		from the waters of a midnight lake <br>that has eclipsed every other vision<br>	that has intoxicated me indelibly <br>		from the very first sip<br>to let you know while we live and breathe and love and hope, <br>	though hope is seldom a road that arrives, <br>		the first tenderness; I feel the first tenderness <br>of being enabled, empowered<br>	by this transfigurative gust of grace <br>		that turns the galaxies deep within me like well-wheels, <br>to summon the images, wraiths, forms of the world, <br>	as it arrays its jewels<br>		on the flying carpets of life, <br>to compare with your beauty, <br>	to embody these auroral aspects of you<br>		that play me like a keyboard of light<br>in the likeness of a woman <br>	whose smile <br>		though it were as many as the leaves of fall, <br>and eyes <br>	though their shining <br>outnumber the morning asters, <br>have never failed to startle me<br>	into realizing everything <br>		I am missing in life and love.</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=476578" data-title="First The Tenderness de Patrick White" data-description="First the tenderness; I feel the tenderness, 
	the downy edge of the leaf, the eyelash, 
		the green tooth of the leaf 
gently opening its mouth to the air, 
	its flag of being high in the branches 
		unfurling like a sky of its own, 
startled by ..."></div>
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