Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476612" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>How Strange To Recall Childhood As An Aging Man</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">How strange to recall childhood as an aging man <br>as if nothing had changed for the last sixty years <br>you're watching yourself as a young boy <br>from a point of awareness somewhere in the air <br>above him like someone he couldn't have foreseen becoming, <br>looking back upon him with great tenderness<br>that I'm what I made of his future as he <br>tries to reverse the bike chain he caught <br>his pant cuff in, and I can do nothing to help him <br>at this remove, except love him as someone should have then<br>when these strange tears didn't taste so much of time. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who could have guessed it would take all these years <br>to fill the absence in his heart up by becoming <br>the intimate familiar of the solitude of a child <br>who could befriend anything that was as lost and wild <br>and wounded as he was and yet could dream <br>of doing great things up late in his room at night <br>to prove he was at least as loveable as any achievement. <br>He was off to fight a holy war of one with himself <br>like a single infidel against the whole of Christendom <br>that I'm the living ruin of because sometimes it's wiser <br>to be defeated than it is to prevail supreme<br>against your own dream of being worthy of love. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Time ripples in the growth rings of a tree<br>echoing the song of a well-seasoned nightbird <br>in the heartwood of a shedding maple <br>that remembers all the lyrics of longing and lament<br>it sings to itself at times like an arrow, a burnt guitar<br>struck by lightning, or one of the strong rafters <br>that uphold the soul like the keel of a lifeboat overturned <br>on the great night sea of a death in life <br>it drowned in more than once like moonset <br>among the corals that tore the bottom of its hull.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And how many cold nights did it take <br>before the syrups began to run sweetly in spring <br>and the new leaves forget the history of their roots<br>as I tried to abandon the child that I was <br>by the side of a road that led him away from me <br>because I thought one of us had to go homeless <br>in order to survive the firestorms of his outraged innocence<br>and the unaccusing guilt of mine as I grew up <br>letting him down in ways that only he can imagine<br>as I spread from one burning building to the next <br>like a new religion that wasn't looking for converts? <br>But if you were to ask me now, I'd say it's funny <br>how he turned out to be the Buddha sitting at the base <br>of the Bodhi tree of my spine, and on a good day, <br>at my best, before the fall, I'm Lucifer leading <br>the sun up at dawn like a child guiding a blind prophet <br>by the hand long before the morning star appeared <br>like Venus to those who were seeking enlightenment <br>without me or themselves to witness what neither of us <br>had attained like the key to the mystery of a universe <br>that had no locks on it to begin with to shut anybody out <br>or keep anybody in. The man in me doesn't blame the child <br>for existing the way I do now trying belatedly <br>to embrace his rejection as a way of life <br>I can make up for by sharing this wounded solitude with him<br>like an injured animal he can see himself in <br>as a potential friend he could identify with <br>as if what had happened to me had once happened to him<br>and we could both approach each other with compassion.</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>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<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=476612" data-title="How Strange To Recall Childhood As An Aging Man de Patrick White" data-description="How strange to recall childhood as an aging man 
as if nothing had changed for the last sixty years 
you're watching yourself as a young boy 
from a point of awareness somewhere in the air 
above him like someone he couldn't have foreseen becoming..."></div>
</div>
</div>