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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476867" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Softened By The Spirit</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Softened by the spirit of the elegant day, <br>saturated colours and the bluing of shapes <br>in the distant mist, <br>homogenous grey sky <br>and the last green leaves of the sumac <br>consumed in their own fires<br>(that's enough of a local habitation and a name) <br>there's a sweetness in the choirs of the ashes <br>that fall everywhere like feathers <br>from the passage of my emotions<br>as I consider the course of my life <br>like the tenderness of smoke <br>unspooling from a blue hill<br>I've been driving down <br>this snakey dirt road <br>forever on and on and on toward <br>without really knowing who lives at the end of it<br>or even if there's an end of it <br>or a door and a threshold and a fire <br>that speaks the same language I do <br>when I'm alone with all my voices <br>like a stream through a grove in the night <br>easier than a god <br>about which ones I listen to.<br>Some are suggestive and alluring <br>and others are bristled with bleach <br>to scrub the stars from the sky <br>like constellations of erotic graffiti <br>that have composed their hunting magic<br>one image over the other <br>under the bridge <br>of the concrete Neanderthals<br>who were squandered on evolution. <br>And voices as mournful <br>as the ghosts of distant trains <br>wailing through the night <br>like mammoths sinking through tar, <br>and voices that are tongue-tied <br>by the single syllables of the fireflies <br>that suddenly tine the darkness, <br>the tintinnabula of light, <br>with mantras no one can play<br>who hasn't sat down to drink <br>with a broken heart. <br>And there are disciplined voices, <br>moons in the mirror, <br>the subtle shepherds of an art <br>that's older than gravity <br>that try to master me<br>like an unforgiving medium<br>that wants to pull the donkey around with a cart<br>and shape me into forms I could not have imagined<br>until I stepped out of them like water.<br>And in the night<br>voices that come carrying their themes<br>like refugees with all they own on their backs, <br>exiled voices that were blown like passports <br>far from the tree that struck them like flags <br>and wrung them out like blood and hatred <br>upon the boundless earth <br>like the rorschats of hemorrhaging maps<br>to long for a life they can't return to<br>once the metal is free of the stone. <br>A curious lack of children's voices, <br>but sometimes at night alone in the woods <br>in a place I'm not sure I'm supposed to be, <br>I can hear a child crying like a well <br>that's been forgotten <br>under the duff of the leaves <br>but I know the pain goes too deep <br>to make anything better <br>and the voice is too well smothered <br>to go witching for it like a watershed <br>with a lantern. <br>And I pass on <br>like a worthless prophecy in a bottle <br>looking for the right island to be found on<br>because I am so lost <br>in the poignant intimacy <br>and impersonal immensity of the sorrow<br>I feel when innocence dies <br>God herself can't look me in the eyes <br>without lying.<br>And voices that once belonged to people<br>now scattered like leaves <br>that show up now and again <br>to ask for mail <br>that might have a return address, <br>then disappointed as a foreign language <br>turn back to look for fossils in the window<br>of the life they once knew.<br>When I was young <br>and knew I would be again tomorrow <br>and the future was not freaked by fear<br>of what happened yesterday<br>I was taught to look for my voice <br>as if it were the holy grail <br>of a mellifluous elixir <br>that could rain in the throat of an hourglass. <br>I was taught to look for the holy one<br>like the gold word of the living bell <br>that would transform <br>the dead embryos<br>that were slain like musical notes<br>in the womb of the lead guitar<br>by Herodian extremes of jealousy <br>into infant harps <br>in the arms of all the sirens <br>I had knocked up.<br>But one voice for all <br>like a speaker of the house <br>who has the final say? <br>I've never known <br>what I'm listening to inside <br>where the world expresses itself freely <br>without consulting me<br>as to what I can and cannot hear <br>because as many as the stars <br>as it takes to sweeten a universe <br>or cells it has taken<br>to write their epitaphs like graffiti <br>on the evolving sentence of my dna<br>growing longer as the sun goes down, <br>are the myriad voices <br>in every single word <br>I've ever overheard<br>in these cemeteries<br>laid out like Latin grammar <br>where every grave-marker <br>is a Rosetta stone<br>whispering in the shadows with Egypt<br>about how estranged everything <br>has become over the years <br>since the death of their afterlife.<br>One voice I like <br>that still comes like a sad mother <br>to a garden-gate on the dark side of the moon<br>and asks in a whisper like a candle in a skull<br>if I've seen any sign of her lost son, <br>is the childless widow of compassion <br>who was once a dancing virgin<br>who could empty a heart like an urn on the wind<br>and fill it again with ghosts from the fire<br>she taught to sing in the choir.<br>And if she is aware <br>of the depths of her suffering<br>she has never made me the measure<br>of the night in her eyes <br>or the dark, starless, seas <br>that break over a heart I cannot fathom.<br>She is the crone-mother of the mystery <br>that is the moon <br>when she throws her light like grief<br>or a biblical passage of thorns <br>over the shoulders of the hills <br>that have died at her feet <br>like soldiers of the black rose <br>who have deepened their repose in death <br>waiting for Jerusalem <br>to turn over its stones with a spade<br>and discover the lunar foundations <br>of the original watershed<br>on which it was laid.<br>And angry, crazy voices <br>that smash into my windows <br>like kamikaze crows<br>suddenly hurled out of the void, <br>voices like acids <br>distempered from the grapes of hell <br>religiously splashed in the eyes<br>of an adolescent schoolgirl <br>like the black adder of the antidote<br>to her spontaneous baptism in the light, <br>flawed voices that haven't spoken in years <br>to the broken mirrors <br>that cut my face like winter rain<br>whenever I look into them <br>like tainted wells <br>on the map of a well known mirage.<br>Voices that make me boil in the bone<br>like the marrow <br>of sexually frustrated volcanoes <br>magmatic with apocalyptic effusions<br>of the creative madness of God <br>when he tempers his fire in the sea <br>and cools his sword in the scabbards <br>of life-bound islands<br>waiting for the first approach <br>of the seed-bearing birds <br>that come like thousands and thousands of words.<br>Voices that coach the sirens <br>of the tone-deaf ambulance <br>to sing instead of scream, <br>to open their mouths wide like a wound<br>and hit the high notes of the silence<br>that mothers the dream that is dying.<br>And the tender voices <br>that smile indulgently like flowers <br>whenever they catch me looking at them <br>as if I were lying to myself again <br>about who was ultimately responsible <br>for the pain I have embodied to live<br>the joy of not knowing <br>the inestimable worth<br>of what it is I give back<br>in the act of being <br>this indeterminate simulacrum of me <br>without fearing that it might be nothing.</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=476867" data-title="Softened By The Spirit de Patrick White" data-description="Softened by the spirit of the elegant day, 
saturated colours and the bluing of shapes 
in the distant mist, 
homogenous grey sky 
and the last green leaves of the sumac 
consumed in their own fires
(that's enough of a local habitation and a name)..."></div>
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