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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476700" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>In That Slum Of A Neighbourhood</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IN THAT SLUM OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In that slum of a neighbourhood <br>you were the Butterscotch Man.<br>Old. East Indian. Sikh. Kind.<br>Long white beard and hair <br>pouring out of your turban.<br>And as I can remember you now <br>fifty-four years later <br>you were a cloud circling the peak<br>of Mt. Sumeru <br>the world mountain<br>that walked among children <br>handing out one hard butterscotch candy to each.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You're always there in my childhood<br>on the corner of Douglas and Hillside <br>by the totem-pole telephone booth <br>everyone jimmied for change, <br>reaching deep into <br>your tattered sports coat pocket <br>with a look of gleeful gratitude on your face <br>that the light had smiled upon you like a child<br>asking for a candy.<br> <br>We were too busy playing for keeps <br>to know how or when you died. <br>One day we just knew you did. <br>And we broke into your small ratty house, <br>that crutch of a box that could barely stand, <br>and we saw how poor you were<br>so much poorer than us<br>and even though you had an address<br>here in Canada among us<br>and stared out through the same windows <br>at the same demeaning day <br>at the doors of the desperately poor as we did, <br>how inestimably far you really were from home<br>and how alone.<br> <br>There was so little to steal <br>who could have robbed you? <br>But I remember the strange calendars <br>no one could tell the time by in Sanskrit<br>shedding the pictures <br>of the same unnamed goddess <br>in flaming sunset colours <br>like the petals of a lotus with its eyes closed.<br> <br>I can't forget the calendars. <br>Or how we went on looking <br>for large hairy black wolf spiders <br>hiding in the darker corners <br>of your abandoned rooms <br>we could dropp hot match-heads on <br>to watch them run like startled wicks.<br> <br>Some kids grow up like saplings. <br>We grew up like sticks. <br>But that one butterscotch candy <br>you were always good for <br>like some unknown kindness <br>we could infallibly depend on <br>however the rest of it hurt<br>has kept on releasing its sweetness in me <br>over the years <br>like some philosopher's stone <br>that rolled down from a very high mountain of a man<br>that still stands before me in his turban<br>even at this distance <br>through the bluing of time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I can still see you on any clear day <br>like snow-capped Mt. Baker on the horizon <br>across the Straits of Georgia<br>all the way to Washington State <br>from the southern tip of Vancouver Island.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if you were alive now <br>I would thank you better than I ever did then<br>when we approached you like a bird-feeder <br>apprehensively as birds. <br>You were handing out <br>your wisdom your life your light <br>the largesse of your spirit <br>without words.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now I've come back alone <br>for all of us who've gone our different ways<br>like the wind and the waves <br>and the heavy clouds <br>of the world we shared back then, <br>some to prison<br>some to god knows where <br>and some to early graves<br>like the seeds of bad beginnings.<br> <br>And it's not that I want to set things right <br>because things are never really wrong <br>to a strong mountain<br>that knows how to stand on its own<br>among humans <br>without blocking the light <br>and there never was a time <br>whenever I saw you as a child <br>I didn't look upon you with delight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now as a man <br>I see you as a long dark night <br>streaming with stars down the Himalayas<br>like the eternal Ganges whose waters<br>I imagine myself standing by for your sake <br>to throw my heart in <br>like that shoot of a rose of blood<br>you rooted in our ancestral starmud <br>like a Taj Mahal of light in the slums<br>of a North American night on earth <br>where the children who went to bed <br>in that cast-off neighbourhood<br>like unanswered prayers<br>stoically beyond their years <br>like prodigies of disappointment<br>brutally acquainted with the dark side of Santa Claus <br>wondering why they weren't worth much<br>to the people who were supposed to love them, <br>remembered you <br>and how much of the world can be saved forever<br>like the taste of kindness <br>in a half-finished butterscoth candy under a pillow<br>as hard as stone<br>dreaming of a huge big-hearted mountain <br>that thawed the milk of human kindness <br>to run down our lives like the lifelines <br>of the melting ice-cream cone<br>you looked like to us in your turban.<br> <br>Thank-you. <br>May this rose of a poem <br>find you everywhere <br>like the children's eyes<br>you opened like moments of light<br>to star in a dark world <br>as if every one of those timeless moments<br>were the lifespan of one of your many afterlives<br>handing out candies on the corners <br>of all the myriad worlds<br>where the children run to your shining <br>like children of the morning <br>with eyes as bright as morning dew<br>to greet the Butterscotch Man<br>and pry open his fingers <br>like the sun on Kashmiri flowers <br>to see what he's got in his hand<br>that would taste like love on the native tongue <br>of any land as wise and old <br>and as compassionate as his forever is.<br> <br>Or as ours was then<br>unfeelingly young by ten.<br>So thank you. <br>Thank-you from all the children of when<br>the world was a shabbier place<br>than this homelessness of now<br>but somehow you always managed <br>to corner a little kind place for each of us<br>in that spacious heart <br>that seemed to understand<br>how to stand forever before us <br>in a turban of snow<br>like a sacred mountain<br>in the body of an ageing holy man<br>as if the deepest secret of life <br>were as childishly simple<br>as a hardrock candy in the open hand<br>of the Butterscotch Man in a turban.<br> <br>PATRICK WHITE</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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In that slum of a neighbourhood 
you were the Butterscotch Man.
Old. East Indian. Sikh. Kind.
Long white beard and hair 
pouring out of your turban.
And as I can remember you now 
fifty-four years later 
you were a..."></div>
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