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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476952" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Western Light</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The western light <br>comes right in through my windows <br>and glows in a golden haze on the dirty panes. <br>It slashs geometric shadows on my landscapes<br>like some mad abstractionist<br>who took them way too personally. <br>And all they said <br>was moon tree star light stone flower river sun<br>as if that were enough of a vocabulary<br>to say the whole of creation <br>quietly under your breath<br>like a secret that’s shared by everyone. <br>Guess I’m not enough of an ideologue <br>to comb the swamp for my own skeleton <br>like the ancestor of modern art. <br>I’ve gazed too long and hard <br>at the waterlilies in the Fall River <br>as if I were meditating on koans <br>that effortlessly open by themselves <br>not to waste my mind on anything <br>that didn’t include my heart<br>like a work in progress<br>like a river on its way to the ocean. <br>Dark soon. <br>The night sheds petals of insight <br>like moonlight making waves<br>on the shoreless seas of enhanced awareness<br>where I stand like a human candle <br>with my little standard of flame <br>trying to light up the universe <br>so I can see what I am in the depths <br>of my own eyes. <br>If I’m the tragicomic clown of my own catastrophe <br>or if there’s something more profound <br>going on around me <br>than time and light<br>glancing off the mindstream <br>like birds against the delusive skies <br>that lie like the windows of insight <br>until you break through them <br>like the sun at midnight<br>shining its light <br>on a conspiracy of mirrors <br>against the moon. <br>I must have been mad before I was born <br>to see things the way I do now. <br>Everything is inconceivably probable somehow<br>like a fortune-cookie<br>that’s had its tongue cut out<br>for telling lies to the emperor <br>or the lack of a sign <br>for the thirteenth house of the misbegotten <br>in the neighbourhood watch of the zodiac. <br>Even when you lose your purpose in life <br>like a passport in a borderless country <br>you can still hang on to your identity <br>like a willess work engendered out of nothing.<br>You can still firewalk the ghost road of smoke <br>like stars under the feet of the dead<br>or follow your own breath <br>like a dancer that no one is leading.<br>It’s a surprise when you first come to see <br>that the greatest liberty of all isn’t death <br>but to cry as if you were bleeding <br>from a wound <br>so much sharper and deeper <br>than the poignancy of the knife that opened it<br>like a posthumous loveletter from the gods <br>you feel <br>reading your own fate <br>in the silence between their voices <br>as if forever hereafter <br>you could only be killed into life <br>and that every rafter of delusion <br>you ever sought shelter under <br>were the overturned hull of an empty lifeboat. <br>Sometimes I look at my life <br>like one of the splendid ambiguities <br>of a subtly nuanced godsend.<br>I try to befriend the way I feel <br>like the generous host <br>of a dangerous stranger<br>too cold and aloof <br>to introduce himself<br>as my shadow <br>my eclipse <br>my potential assassin. <br>I have tried to stay true to the lies <br>that led to the myth of my lucidity <br>like a mirage in a desperate desert of stars<br>I could drown in like an island <br>up to to the neck of an hourglass<br>in tidal waves of quicksand<br>laying my life down <br>like the foundation stone <br>of an inverted pyramid <br>that yearns for the state of mind <br>he enjoyed before life <br>more than that that won’t come after. <br>I have refused to put the torch out in its own reflection. <br>I have not tried to uproot <br>the beauty of the waterlilies <br>opening their eyes like stars<br>from the decay and the lies <br>and the scars that sustain them.<br>I have put to good use <br>the dysfunction of delusion <br>to make a credible raft <br>to get me to the other side <br>of this river of shadows <br>swollen like a flashflood <br>in a lunar seabed. <br>I have danced with ghosts<br>like a lonely shaman <br>around the unappeasable fires<br>of desire and death <br>entreating the nightsky <br>to rain on my flowerless roots<br>and sweeten the severity<br>of the dragon’s eyes <br>with tears. <br>I have lived in such a way <br>to actualize the nameless reality <br>of a few common words<br>like love and understanding <br>I’ve kept alight like fireflies on the wind<br>and cherished them <br>as if the seeds of insight<br>were the perennial beginning <br>of enlightened orchards <br>that taste like the fruit of compassion. <br>I have lived in such a way<br>like a thief of keys <br>to relieve the locks <br>on the nightwatch <br>of their tunnel vision <br>that it’s not safe <br>to give my new address <br>to my old mailbox.<br>But even in a black out <br>I have not kept the light out <br>by plastering my windows with starmaps<br>or gone underground <br>like a blind star-nosed mole <br>that put its eyes out <br>to share something <br>in common with the dead<br>who would never have dreamed <br>they would all end up sleeping with their mothers. <br>I open them to receive the sun. <br>I close them to remember the stars<br>I’ve been dancing under <br>for lightyears <br>against the gathering storm <br>like a poor man’s chandeliers.<br>I have celebrated my defiance <br>of hitching a winged horse <br>to a hearse <br>by expressing the joy I take <br>in the revolutionary spontaneity <br>of my unself-reliance. <br>But of all the things <br>I’ve ever outgrown <br>or overthrown <br>like a sword from a bridge <br>I gave back to the sacred waters of life <br>the last to fall <br>was the ghostship in the mirage <br>of the image I had of me.<br>I poured myself out <br>like imaginary water <br>from a fountainmouth <br>in a real drought<br>to green the secret Edens<br>at the sacred crossroads <br>of the four rivers <br>that might come of it<br>as if X marked the spot <br>where I was standing <br>as the best place to start a garden<br>on the waterwheel of the mindstreams<br>that radiated out of its stillness like spokes.<br>Sometimes you end up stealing fire <br>when all along <br>you thought you were meant<br>to invent the wheel <br>or make up a new language <br>out of the echoes of dolphins <br>breaking into birdsong <br>as if they had turned in their feet <br>to go back to the sea <br>but had not forgotten <br>that their fins<br>could fly as easily <br>as the wings they once wore on their heels. <br>Many rivers flow into the one sea <br>and the sea returns to transcendence<br>back the way it came<br>without stepping into the same mindstream twice. <br>And I prefer to think <br>that the same thing is true of the multiverse. <br>Everything that shines in the night<br>or in the mind <br>down to the smallest spark of insight<br>locked like a firefly <br>in a lighthouse of ice <br>on the same omnidirectional course.<br>And true north <br>just the magnetic attraction <br>of a voodoo doll <br>in a haystack of needles<br>trying to get a bearing on things <br>like the right ascension <br>and correct declination<br>of a lost soul<br>summoned like a deranged galaxy<br>to the singularity<br>at the bottom of a blackhole<br>to exchange the light it goes by <br>by upgrading its eyesight<br>to search for itself in the night <br>on the higher frequencies<br>of X-ray vision<br>on board an experimental satellite.<br>And yet for all the myriad universes <br>that bubble up in hyperspace <br>like the last breath of the drowning <br>I have refused to live<br>like a diving bell in a wishing well<br>trying to understand <br>why nothing came true but the coins.<br>If you’ve never resolved anything in your whole life <br>maybe you were meant <br>to keep the mystery alive. <br>The medium is not the message <br>when the message is the mystery. <br>A meaningful medium <br>is nothing but meaningless words. <br>The sky doesn’t intend to say birds. <br>The water doesn’t mean fish<br>anymore than an infinite number of other things. <br>Nothing lives like a machine <br>for something as small as a purpose. <br>You don’t have to live like a lens <br>to keep the sun in focus. <br>And maybe one of the greatest blessings <br>of being on the nightshift <br>is that when the universe is out of work <br>it has no use for us. <br>We’re free to be when and whatever we want. <br>Or thoroughly protean. <br>Or nothing at all. <br>A full eclipse of the clock on the wall<br>or a chromatically aberrant nightlight <br>like a colour crazy star <br>low on the horizon of the hall. <br>As for me and my house <br>I’ve lost track of the number of times <br>I’ve brought my starmud to enlightenment <br>like a horse you can lead to water <br>but you can’t make drink.<br>The words crawl. <br>The words swim. <br>The words take to their wings <br>like eagles and dragonflies <br>and startled waterbirds. <br>Half a sliced pear <br>looks like a short-necked Spanish guitar.<br>Looking for the meaning of this <br>isn’t the same <br>as listening to the music.</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=476952" data-title="The Western Light de Patrick White" data-description="The western light 
comes right in through my windows 
and glows in a golden haze on the dirty panes. 
It slashs geometric shadows on my landscapes
like some mad abstractionist
who took them way too personally. 
And all they said 
was moon tree sta..."></div>
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