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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Long Ago</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Long ago I learned to forgive <br>	yesterday’s shadows <br>		like the daggers of a dead assassin<br>I melted down into bells <br>	without occasion to sing. <br>		I was tenderly adamant<br>about the need for compassion <br>	and hung them from the loftiest towers <br>		like iron fruit or rain frozen in its descent.<br>Only the conceptualists <br>	indulge in perfect virtues<br>		and mine, at best, <br>are improvised approximations<br>	of the dark whispers <br>		of the blind fish<br>that swim in the watersheds of my heart. <br>	And there was no other way <br>		of pouring the infection out of the wound <br>except by inviting the maggots to the feast.<br>	I reproached them all <br>		with the wisdom of a mirror <br>for relishing the worst of me. <br>	It’s hard to remember sometimes <br>		that even flies have a dignity of their own, <br>if no honey, <br>	and even the city rose <br>		turns into an old, well-thumbed book eventually, <br>an index of celebrity desecrations.<br>	I kept my eclipses and dragons <br>		up my bounteous sleeves<br>and took the trembling stagefright of the stars <br>	cowering behind their cardboard hills seriously. <br>		Whatever the mind realm, <br>whatever facet of the jewel turning in the growlight, <br>	whatever feather of the spirit <br>		soaring overhead with a twig of fire <br>or groping below like a star-nosed mole, <br>	my heart turned into a lifeboat, a well, a telescope, <br>		and I hauled everyone up and in and out of themselves <br>until the moon began to look like a pulley<br>	and there was an echo in the siloes <br>		of my exhortative sufficiency. <br>Sometimes the galaxies were easier to save than the candles, <br>	but I applied my whips and swans lovingly<br>		I was a good oar on a seaworthy vessel <br>and eventually my heart turned into a rudder. <br>	I launched every pulse in the name of the unknown<br>		and soon found myself a stranger <br>in the eyes of the people who had climbed to safety <br>	up the nets and rope-ladders <br>		I learned to fashion from my spinal cord.<br>I wasn’t a rudder on a lifeboat anymore; <br>	I was a dead shark, dorsal down, <br>		lethal, a meat-plough. <br>Nobody knew me as I was. <br>	I struggled deeply within myself <br>		to assume the throne of my isolation, <br>my heart freaked by the hazard of random lightning strikes, <br>	challenged by demons <br>		I could not win against, <br>crescent moons that broke off in my throat and voice like teeth.<br>	I became the nightwatchman <br>		of pleading shadows laid out <br>like corpses in a morgue, <br>	a lamp in the arms of its own journey, <br>		while their bodies walked around delinquently. <br>And the shining was black, the light, <br>	an eerie pollen of the night, <br>		an indelible soot lasered like destiny <br>on the sheets and sails of a soul I could never wash out, <br>	a luminosity that just didn’t open <br>		the moths and flowers like letters <br>but rewrote them, a transformative mirror, <br>	an eclipse of the sun <br>		that rises within at midnight, <br>an illumination that didn’t just reflect<br>but imagined the things of the world into being <br>	and went on changing them, <br>mutating them, <br>seer and seen alike<br>	on the same side of the mirror<br>that suggested them into existence inconceivably, <br>	though there was no existence <br>		or non-existence <br>to exit or enter by. <br>	My seeing grew cold and impersonal, <br>		space, a straitjacket of glass, <br>my heart, an ancient ice-berg on the moon, <br>	and with a shriek of mouthless perception <br>		my blood was blanched into flowing diamond.<br>I dared to look upon suffering, <br>	my own and the pantomime of others, <br>		as the flaring of a brutal creative fire <br>that wracked the world in an unwitnessed dream<br>	lonelier than the wind without a star or a candle. <br>		And I knew it was saying me <br>behind the mask <br>	of every hopeless word I uttered. <br>		And I saw at the dark gate <br>that reason was only another peer of the realm, <br>	and there was an infinitude of skys and windows beyond <br>		that my eyes hadn’t grown into yet, <br>flying like a bird into the vision <br>	until only the vision remained, <br>and there were intimate metals in every rock <br>that had been confided into being like a secret. <br>	Reason was merely a prim shadow<br>in the cosmic fire-womb <br>of the original madness<br>	to make the hidden known, <br>		whispering the world <br>into its own ear like a blasting cap. <br>	Everything exists to know the hidden <br>		as a robe of its own blood, <br>the taste of stars in the sap of the sugar maples in spring, <br>	whether the cool mushrooms of her lips <br>		that she offers up in the night <br>under the evergreens <br>	are dangerously hallucinogenic, <br>		or tenderly toxic, white angel or fly agaric.<br>I found it important to learn <br>	what doesn’t make me happy, <br>		and then to learn <br>that there isn’t anything that would<br>	as I long as I persisted <br>		in looking for the meaning of my joy, <br>the replicable reason <br>	that would let me breed it <br>		like a butterfly or a silkworm in captivity. <br>Now bliss comes when it does <br>	naked and adorned, <br>		impoverished and squandering, <br>and my heart is more of an empty, open hand <br>	than a fist clenched around <br>		something it feared to lose. <br>Haven’t you noticed the sad drinkers <br>	in the all night taverns <br>		who age faster than the wine in their glasses <br>as soon as they start <br>	to con the god into staying, <br>		make a cage of the tree <br>to snare the elusive nightbird<br>	that enhances their darkness <br>		with a voice hinged to a doorway of light? <br>And the theorists trying to sweep<br>	the ashes of stars <br>		immolated in their own light like moths <br>off their thresholds with tweezers? <br>	And those who live like pharaohs <br>		under pyramids of quicksand<br>they’ve made of their hearts <br>anticipating afterlives<br>	that look a lot like this one <br>when the bandages will come off <br>	like the brittle eyelids <br>		of a shedding rose<br>and the bull harps will seed the moon again<br>	and the echo at the end of the dream <br>		won’t be just the voice of another used beginning.</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=476747" data-title="Long Ago de Patrick White" data-description="Long ago I learned to forgive 
	yesterday’s shadows 
		like the daggers of a dead assassin
I melted down into bells 
	without occasion to sing. 
		I was tenderly adamant
about the need for compassion 
	and hung them from the loftiest towers 
		l..."></div>
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