<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>It's Not So Much</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">It's not so much the darkness <br>that bothers me <br>it's just that at these depths<br>the sea forgets how to dream. <br>And being a lamp unto yourself <br>where the darkness is so naive <br>it doesn't run from the light <br>isn't as much fun<br>as watching stars<br>try to imitate spiders<br>in the eleven dimensional corner<br>of my left eye<br>like cut-out constellations. <br>I'm not one of those who go looking for meaning <br>because they want to mean something themselves.<br>I listen to the hissing <br>of olaceously black rain on the asphalt <br>as the cars go by under my window<br>and the streetlights run like blood<br>in the gutters of their hemorrhaging swords.<br>The physicians must heal themselves <br>when the shadows of their grails fall ill.<br>I'm just singing <br>without seeking anything <br>like a nightbird in a secret grove<br>or a busker on a streetcorner <br>playing for nothing <br>because I don't know what to ask for anymore<br>that isn't just another version <br>of everything I've already had. <br>I'm just casting my voice like a ventriloquist <br>to overcome the loneliness <br>of the return journey home <br>only to discover <br>no one lives there anymore. <br>Illusory cures for illusory diseases.<br>Struggling not to be void-bound <br>is like a mastodon<br>trying to swim in quicksand.<br>You sink like the cornerstone <br>of a pyramid with a tilt. <br>You become the architect of a museum <br>your skeleton built<br>bone by bone <br>out of your minerally preserved <br>retroactive remains. <br>And it isn't quite pain. <br>And it isn't quite despair. <br>I'm wholly here and awake <br>but here isn't anywhere <br>and there's no road to take. <br>I ache <br>but there's no longing <br>in the austere geometry of the windowpanes. <br>And if love were to come again <br>at this late date<br>what could that be <br>but more of the hysterical history<br>of the mystery of beauty and pain? <br>The moon running its tongue <br>along the edge of a sacrificial knife <br>to taste the wounded divinity <br>like poetry <br>in the festive blood <br>of a willing victim? <br>That knife was long ago <br>blunted on me <br>like the moon<br>trying to retract its claws<br>like the first and last crescents<br>out of a stone heart<br>it broke its fangs on <br>trying to maul it like a strawberry. <br>I still enjoy the flesh and spirit of women <br>and even if love is just <br>the effusion of an enzyme <br>that weighs the dealer <br>in the scales of his own delusion <br>and finds a feather's weight missing<br>from the baggie he sold his soul<br>I told myself lightyears ago <br>in a narcotic cul de sac of the sixties<br>when I was more radical than Mephistopheles <br>that if it hasn't got a root on it <br>don't do it<br>but women can take a weed like me home <br>growing wild in a roadside ditch <br>and burying me deep<br>like someone they cherished<br>like the king of the waxing year <br>embedding my body parts <br>in a wound in the earth<br>invent agriculture.<br>If I am to be offered up as a tribute to love <br>I would still rather be harvested <br>than preyed upon. <br>But I fear what's left of the garden <br>is just a few sunflowers for the bluejays <br>and a handful of scattered seeds for the smaller birds. <br>A rusting scythe under a blue moon <br>and an inspired scarecrow <br>reciting poetry <br>to the autumn crows <br>who don't have the ear for it<br>or an eye for anything that isn't<br>detachably silver. <br>And what of fame <br>that dirty word in an unclean mouth <br>that algae bloom in a crystal ball <br>that clouds it like a brackish aquarium <br>until the prophetic fish is lost<br>in the smog of its own unknowing <br>like Venus in the soot of a factory nightshift<br>when she beds down with Vulcan? <br>Who wants to be a name<br>bigger than their book<br>laid out like a gravestone<br>in the literary cemetery <br>of store-front windowpanes <br>that traffic implausible afterlives<br>among the dead<br>like hyperbolic pyramids <br>to mummified mannequins <br>with hype for breath<br>and social fashionistas<br>trying to make revolutionary statements<br>by using cosmetic accessories<br>as a dietary substitute for brains? <br>Who wants to shine on a starmap<br>when they've got the whole sky before them? <br>Who would choose <br>to fly like a kite on a leash <br>when they've got the wings of a bird? <br>Fame is like trying to take <br>the whole alphabet for your name<br>but you can tell it's just a little hell<br>a poppy of fire <br>by the way it goes out like a candle<br>and any gust of time <br>can deflower its eternal flame. <br>Better to let your name thrive <br>like alien life <br>on an undiscovered planet<br>than become a tourist attraction.<br>At the moment of conception <br>who needs an audience in the womb <br>and at the leaving of life <br>maggots in your literary corpus <br>even before you're in the tomb? <br>Why mark your remains with a pyramid <br>when any blade of grass will do? <br>Created out of starmud <br>it's natural to want to shine<br>like flowers stars and mirrors<br>to let your light wake the worlds up <br>at daybreak<br>like the roar of tigers in the valley <br>but fame is a false dawn <br>and an unworthy witness <br>to your solitude. <br>Better to let your legend grow <br>and shed its own skin <br>like the moon or a snake <br>and start again naked <br>than dress up for your art <br>in the farce of a public wardrobe. <br>Some shine like a phoenix of desire. <br>Some write their name <br>like the light ricocheting off of water<br>but who takes a star <br>and imprints it like a fossil in cement<br>and walked and spit upon underfoot <br>expects to be pointed out <br>like one of the radiant highlights<br>of a mythogeneric firmament? <br>Catch a falling star<br>and put it in your pocket <br>never let it fade away.<br>Two minutes with a hook <br>isn't the lyric of a book <br>that's much of a rocket. <br>I'd rather be spaced out on my own <br>like the wavelength of a flying carpet <br>swimming like a sign of serpentine intelligence<br>written like a hieroglyph for time <br>on the tides of sand <br>in this desert of stars<br>than try to live up to the afterlives <br>they will tell about me <br>like lies about a pyramid.<br>Excellence is a darker affair than success.<br>I'm as lunar as any wolf I've ever run with <br>but that doesn't mean <br>I'm howling my heart out <br>to be the man on the moon in a spotlight.<br>I'm just up alone in the middle of the night <br>in an agony of insight<br>trying to keep from going mad<br>when the muse renews her virginity in my blood <br>like the craziest affair I've ever had<br>with the moon in my solitude<br>breaking through the clouds<br>as if she were rising from her bath. <br>Let your name be a leaf on the mindstream <br>of the path you're on.<br>Your fame a whiff of smoke<br>from a fire rising among the trees<br>on a distant hillside.<br>Fame is a highway<br>but it's the rivers <br>that will remember your name. <br>The life of the mind <br>doesn't keep secrets from the heart<br>but fame will make you a stranger to your art. <br>It's a new creation in every moment <br>flashing in and out of the abyss <br>like the occult semaphore <br>of a ghost ship in distress. <br>Excellence keeps success behind it<br>like a star keeps its light in its wake.<br>Everything is dark before it <br>and keeping up with the times <br>means being a day late <br>for your own arrival. <br>Yesterday can't prophecy <br>what will be true about tomorrow. <br>Only today can lie like that. <br>Better the lonely bliss <br>of anonymous dark matter <br>making the world up<br>as it goes along <br>like something homeless<br>whistling its way through the night <br>like the nameless lyric <br>of an unknown road <br>it's been following for years<br>than the crowded sorrows <br>of a mirror that weeps <br>unenlightened tears in a spotlight<br>that fall like fake jewels<br>from the last take of the third eye<br>on the opening night of a braille television.<br>Get behind me Satan. <br>Get behind me A Dajal the One-eyed Liar. <br>I'm not looking for distractions <br>and I'm not asking for the truth. <br>I'm not setting leg hold trap line experiments <br>to capture the facts<br>or lamplighting in the groves of knowledge.<br>The only body of wisdom I appeal to <br>is my own <br>and I get up <br>and wash its face every morning. <br>I don't take the high or the low place. <br>I take the no place <br>and things come to me <br>like poems sailing down the Yang-tze<br>like swans following <br>a trail of feathers shed by the moon<br>or heretical autumn leaves <br>washed down the world mountain<br>by disbelieving mindstreams<br>like refugees <br>purged by the more <br>religiously conservative evergreens.<br>The truth flowers out of its own root <br>for each of us <br>like a waterlily out of a swamp<br>or a chandelier of columbines <br>out of the moss pate <br>on a granite skull. <br>The minute you go looking for it <br>it leaves home. <br>I am that I am. <br>Sit still and know.<br>So why go around <br>overturning everybody's heads <br>like stones <br>to seek <br>what abides in you<br>like the apple abides in the seed? <br>It's clear. <br>Everyone's a false idol <br>in the shrine of their mirroring consciousness. <br>But fear isn't the beginning of wisdom <br>anymore than courage is. <br>Life doesn't cast a shadow<br>like the terrible aftermath of the light <br>if you don't get it right. <br>The best thing is <br>to sit down <br>on the ground of your being <br>in the absence of God <br>and have a good laugh <br>at finding reality up your own sleeve<br>when it wasn't the answer <br>but the enlightened question <br>that set you free.<br>That what you find <br>sad mad bad about the world <br>is the shadow of your own lucidity. <br>And if God is missing from your life <br>what could that be <br>but her original refusal <br>to impose herself like a prison <br>on your liberty? <br>Not that. <br>Not this. <br>Beyond delusion and reality.<br>Not bound. <br>Not free. <br>The absolute clarity of the abyss <br>looking into the mystery of me <br>with my own eyes<br>like someone watching me in a dream <br>that wakes up with me when I do.<br>I have given of the gifts I was given <br>in full measure and a bit beside. <br>Water back to water. <br>Breath back to space. <br>To live is to give. <br>It's the nature of the place. <br>And you don't need a Zen master <br>on a tatami mat <br>or a blue Sufi on a prayer rug <br>to understand that. <br>Your face is the blossom <br>of your body fruit <br>and your hands and feet <br>are its leaves. <br>You're a rootless tree <br>standing in the midst <br>of your own luminous windfall<br>and the worlds are humming <br>with bees at your feet. <br>Your heart sweetens <br>in the ageless autumn sun<br>and at night <br>your mind is a riot of stars. <br>Though my life may have been broken <br>like a toy in the hands of an intense muse<br>I have lived openly in her fire <br>without any skin on<br>and walked barefoot for lightyears <br>with the ashes of a phoenix in an urn <br>to deposit on the unswept stairs <br>of one of her ancient shrines<br>all that was left of my heart. <br>I've made a firewalk of the stars.<br>I've tasted the honey of life <br>in her hive of bliss <br>and drunk the black elixirs<br>when she dances like a snakepit<br>and makes a grail of my skull <br>and fills it full of the abyss<br>and says here<br>drown all of this <br>in a single gulp.<br>I have kissed the serpent on the head <br>like the sun the green bud of a daffodil<br>and it was me that bloomed <br>like the solar flare a cobra.<br>I have been her lover <br>and she has been my will.<br>I have been her garden <br>and she has been <br>the secret flower <br>that arises from my decay. <br>And the only road I've ever taken <br>that led me up to her threshold <br>was the one I made through the starfields <br>by wandering off the path. <br>Only the lost pilgrim can find his way to her.<br>He can tell by the light in her eyes <br>that he's only chasing fireflies <br>in all directions at once <br>but that's more than enough to encompass <br>the whole earth <br>and beyond the veils of Isis <br>in the heavens above<br>feel the stars streaming through your blood <br>like one fix of love she knows<br>even in the depths <br>of your eyeless solitude <br>will keep you high forever.<br>I'm her fool <br>and she's the muse of my folly. <br>Her tongue draws blood <br>like a thorny leaf <br>and I bleed beads of holly. <br>In her voice <br>I can hear the name <br>of every woman <br>I've ever been apprenticed to <br>like an echo of the sound <br>of one hand clapping for an encore. <br>She's been the geni<br>and I've been her magic lamp.<br>She's tied me to a stake <br>like the first rule <br>of an unprincipled heretic <br>who burns like midnight oil <br>in a school <br>because he thinks it's sexier <br>to be a taboo<br>than a threshold<br>and applied herself like fire <br>to my education. <br>She's been my funeral pyre <br>but I've been the keeper of the flame. <br>She's never given me the key to her place <br>but she's never <br>not left the door ajar <br>or an open window <br>for me to enter<br>like a thief of fire <br>approaches a furnace <br>knowing he will be consumed <br>in the fulfilment of his own prophecy.<br>The washed-up starfish <br>turns into a galaxy. <br>I live to suffer <br>what I rejoice in the most. <br>So that every love poem <br>I ever wrote her<br>was a fresh wound <br>not an old scar.<br>An ageless flame on an aging lamp <br>I have been a traveller <br>and she has been the star<br>that has filled the field <br>of my enraptured vision<br>with worlds within worlds.<br>Her inspiration has not deceived me. <br>I have received what she has given <br>and more. <br>Now I want to be <br>what the genie wishes for.</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=476717" data-title="It's Not So Much de Patrick White" data-description="It's not so much the darkness that bothers me it's just that at these depths the sea forgets how to dream. And being a lamp unto yourself where the darkness is so naive it doesn't run from the light isn't as much fun as watching stars try to..."></div> </div> </div>

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