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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476942" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Serpent</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The serpent sits enthroned <br>	at the top of its own stairwell, <br>		helically reposing in its own empyrean <br>like an August hawk<br>	coiling up its own thermals; <br>		its fangs, a stargate <br>to an unknown afterlife, emancipation, <br>	and the jewel of its head, <br>		the first stone thrown, <br>a small planet without<br>	the eyelid of a sky, <br>		a nugget of mystic uranium, <br>looped in a turban of orbits, <br>	a sacred arrowhead <br>		that flys from itself like a bow<br>drawn back long before the wind <br>	knew its first feather. <br>		Lethal healer, <br>the sword that kills is the sword that saves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">	This morning, <br>		the drubbing of the rain on a tin roof, <br>the hiss of traffic <br>	flaring like matches down the sleek asphalt, <br>		if I were to say <br>I want the emotional life of space, <br>	I don't know if I'd mean it, <br>		but I'm so weary <br>of being this slow crisis of a bird <br>	mesmerized by the swaying eyes <br>		of the black lightning <br>that has caught me in the net<br>	it weaves of my own nerves, <br>		I want to douse my heart <br>in the next providential tide of tears <br>	like a torch I put out in the night <br>		to see better in the dark.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I asked for wings <br>	and my spine was adorned with fire.<br>		I asked for water <br>and I'm a fish on the wind. <br>	and now this desert I hoped to remain, <br>		a craze of sand, <br>has grown teeth<br>	and is overgrazing the starfields like pyramids.<br> <br>		I don't think <br>I will ever recover <br>	from the wound I received <br>		like the hidden twin of the moon, <br>trying to love the world, myself, women, people. <br>	Every word was a road, a pulse, an eye, <br>		a dropp of blood <br>I could ride to the end of and beyond <br>	into the implacable subtlety<br>		of my own empty, ageless temples<br>where even the silence isn't ghost enough <br>	to conjure a medium<br>		to jar the table as a sign, <br>and death is buried in its own vacuity <br>	like an embryo in a mask without eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">		I was bound by my own boundlessness, <br>my nerves, wicks in the abyss <br>	that enhanced the darkness <br>		by cleaving me like a tree <br>vision after vision, <br>	another world <br>		with every blink of the eye<br>that wiped the mirror clean of me like an ax<br>	until I understood <br>		that even the most enlightened watersheds of wisdom<br>are just a smear of perception <br>	on the least dropp of that splendor <br>		I went looking for like a cloud <br>saturated with the ancient seas of the moon <br>	that was covered by my own looking.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">		I lay at the bottom <br>of my oceanic odyssey, <br>	trying not to sink, <br>		but I wanted to give something back <br>for what I felt I had received; <br>	not an ethic or a metaphysic, <br>		but a spontaneous action of the blood <br>that remembers it was once a rose. <br>	I wanted to return spring like a water-key to the moon; <br>		I wanted to harvest the shadows <br>of my own non-existence <br>	and break bread <br>		with the famine of ghosts <br>that came like royalty to beg food from their servant, <br>	blind doors standing on the thresholds of awareness<br>		asking me to address myself <br>to the terrible openness <br>	of their unanswerable need.<br> <br>		I have eaten my own ashes <br>in the furnace of every star <br>	I have ever looked upon. <br>		I have drowned in the wells<br>of the faceless, fathomless mirrors, <br>	and every woman I have ever drunk from<br>		was a grail with an enigmatic black pearl in it <br>lustrous as the moon in eclipse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">	O promises of bliss <br>		that tuned the webs of the spiders<br>like a guitarist with perfect pitch<br>to the frequency of my spinal cord<br>	that I might entangle a star <br>in the silk of my conceiving; <br>	that I might seize a firefly <br>		in the fangs of my thought <br>and taste the honey of the lantern <br>	that lit my dark corner <br>		in the era of the moment.<br> <br>O sweetest of lies to ripen with longing <br>	like the eyes of a child in the darkness<br>		far from home.<br>I was trying to find a road <br>	that fit my walking like shoes on a mountain; <br>		I was trying to walk on water with mystic crutches; <br>I was looking for an arrow <br>	dipped in the blood of a serpent with wings, <br>		set aflame by a demonic star <br>and feathered by spiritual fire <br>	to restring me like a bow <br>		severed like the branch of a sacred grove<br>by the oracular blade of the moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">	I was too deeply sheathed in the truth <br>		to appreciate the arcane sagacity of my lies. <br>I stood like a shadow in the burning doorway of my own fire<br>	and looked deeply into the night <br>		to answer my own knocking<br>like the echo of a stranger in the darkness, <br>	walking away from someone who didn't know<br>		how to greet himself.<br> <br>I was a tree crucified on a man, <br>	a vandal in the shrine of the moment, <br>		bleeding like stained-glass, <br>a rosary of vertebrae and skulls <br>	reconstructed in the future museum of now<br>		I played myself into like a funeral plan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now everywhere the wind is a pilgrim, <br>	I leave my heart like a shrine <br>		I will never return to. <br>And the sadness, and the solitude <br>	and the vastness of my insignificance <br>		is the shadow of a bird on a cloud.<br>The only way to perfect my defeat <br>	was to sit at the feet of my most cherished delusion<br>		like a rootless flower watching over a coffin, <br>then rise like the wind <br>	from the rubbish of the shedding, <br>	 the loneliest pillar and sole cornerstone of the sky.<br> <br>Now my apish profundities <br>	no longer crack fleas of light like stars <br>		I picked out of God's burning beard <br>with the forceps of the moon.<br>	Now I am infested with constellations.<br>		I no longer turn the pages of the waterlilies <br>like the holy books of an inspired swamp.<br>	I no longer seep down to the river <br>		to drink from the moon<br>like a serpent at the water's edge<br>and watch the panicked angels jumping <br>	from the reflection of an uncrossed bridge<br>that collapsed like a covenant with hell.<br>	I no longer shred my heart <br>		like a secret document <br>in an abandoned embassy of swans<br>	looking for asylum further south, <br>		tormented by the unattainability <br>of a woman's beauty, <br>	looking for sanctuary <br>		in the ashes of a black sail <br>that flared like a poppy with passion<br>	at every gust of desire <br>		that silvered the trembling grass<br>with sidereal aspirations.<br> <br>	Why bother to laminate your lovers, your legends? <br>		Let them go like autumn leaves and smoke, <br>the last breath you took <br>	before you were interred<br>		like a scream in the larynx of a deaf-mute, <br>a foreign currency you couldn't spend at home. <br>	Naked is the only way to dress for the rain, <br>		but it doesn't matter which <br>from the wardrobe of all your many lies<br>	you wear to the fire that waits for you <br>		like a fledgling waits for its plumage.<br> <br>And this is a long river <br>	and this is a long day and a night <br>		and maybe only the silence is listening <br>to what the stars are preaching <br>	from the pulpits of the flowers, <br>		and this that says me now <br>is just the promo for the intensive care ward<br>	of a new religion <br>		the founders are always the first to betray; <br>but when I truly let go <br>	it was my falling <br>		that taught me to patch my shoes with the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And have you come this far, <br>	passed through this many gates <br>		for wisdom, compassion, freedom, <br>wandered aimlessly until you could not tell <br>	the stars from the sand, <br>		the journey from the arrival, <br>suffered worse than all the things you cannot say<br>	until you forgot what you were looking for <br>		in the first place, until <br>you despised what you craved the most? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">	I don't remember how long I slept <br>		before my dreaming woke me up <br>and I realized <br>	no fool could defame my solitude <br>		and that life <br>was only the story of a scar <br>	looking for the knife that inflicted it <br>		like a shadow <br>in the forsaken valleys <br>of the mountains of the moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">	Looking for a pearl of light <br>I had to plunge into a darkness <br>	deeper than anything <br>		my eyes had ever given birth to before.<br>I had to swallow the key before I could open the door.</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=476942" data-title="The Serpent de Patrick White" data-description="The serpent sits enthroned 
	at the top of its own stairwell, 
		helically reposing in its own empyrean 
like an August hawk
	coiling up its own thermals; 
		its fangs, a stargate 
to an unknown afterlife, emancipation, 
	and the jewel of its head..."></div>
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