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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476974" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Things Might Be Drifting Away</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Things might be drifting away <br>like an empty lifeboat <br>with nothing left to save<br>but the memory of moonlight<br>on the rush of a wave of the heart <br>that rose and fell <br>like a bell of insight on the night watch<br>that said all's well all's well for the night. <br>And so it was for a while.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Time might seem <br>that it's overstaying its welcome<br>and you've become the estranged guest<br>of a bad dream <br>in your own bed <br>in the thirteenth house of the zodiac <br>where the dispossessed <br>shack up with the misbegotten<br>and the ghosts of everything you've forgotten <br>don't give you any rest <br>until all that you've cursed <br>out of anger and need<br>has been immensely forgiven and blessed.<br>And perhaps it appears <br>you've been the rogue star<br>of a sign in long exile <br>far away from now <br>and that might account <br>for your misplaced trust in mirrors<br>and your lack of confidence in star maps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Happiness just happens <br>like good luck and grace<br>and the creative inspiration<br>to rejoice in your time and place here <br>as if the purpose of your voice <br>were always to praise<br>even on the darkest of days <br>when the only thing <br>that shone in your eyes <br>weren't the stars you kept <br>locked away in your tears<br>like the face paint of clowns <br>or the crown jewels of the Pleiades<br>but a bitter farce of black holes<br>in the veils of the mirage <br>that eclipsed your enlightenment<br>with a starless night<br>it's impossible to get beyond.<br>And so it may well be <br>for those who've been <br>as far gone for as long you have.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But even the blind are shining <br>though they can't see it<br>and the deaf are still singing <br>though they can't hear it <br>and the dead are still living <br>though they can't feel it. <br>And those who have given up seeking<br>still find what they were looking for<br>like a loveletter with a return address<br>and an open door that recognizes them <br>like the prodigal threshold <br>of a homeless human<br>about to cross one more <br>like the last step of a long journey<br>that lost its way back in all directions <br>like the radiance of a star in space and time <br>that never took its eye off the past.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We cherish the flowers of summer that bloom last<br>more poignantly than those of the spring<br>because we feel our own hour of farewell <br>in the progress of their passing. <br>The sadness of an earthly excellence <br>fulfilled and surpassed <br>we see in the shedding of the aster's petals <br>and in the lowering of the wild rose's eyelids <br>and in the lengthening of the black walnut's shadows <br>that move like cool water <br>across the dry grass of a late afternoon <br>signs of the same night approaching us.<br>And we know it will be dusk soon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We'll look up at the blue moon in late October <br>and whether the silos are full or empty <br>wonder if every harvest <br>wears the same death mask we do<br>with the smile of a scythe on its face<br>or if the goddess of the grain <br>bears true witness to <br>the perennial innocence of death<br>in the way she enhances <br>the white spectre of the first frost<br>to shock the garden down to its roots<br>with the same koan she uses <br>to enlighten the dew on the stargrass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you might dread the coming excruciations<br>of the scarecrow immolated on the pyre <br>of its own substance <br>like the short straw of flesh<br>that once sustained it <br>lost in a draw with death.<br>And come to scorn your heart like an urn <br>filled with ashes in the aftermath <br>of the same fire that once filled it <br>so full of desire to bloom <br>it could no more contain itself <br>than a seed can keep a secret from the spring.<br> <br>You could see it that way.<br>And who among those clinging<br>like a blue atmosphere <br>to this homeless grain of dust<br>in the vastness of these sidereal immensities<br>within and without <br>that animate us like starmud <br>to join in this dance of life and death <br>like a legacy of shining<br>that can't be washed out of our eyes<br>though tears have fallen for lightyears<br>on the root fires of what we've loved and lost.<br>Who among these<br>could say you were wrong? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Because no river's flowing <br>the wrong way to the sea<br>in this reunion of arrivals and departures<br>at the stations of our afterlives <br>on this wheel of birth and death. <br>We're all going to make it back <br>to where we came from <br>one way or another. <br>Some like rain.<br>Some like ice. <br>Some like snow. <br>Some like the lingering ghost <br>of morning mist on the lake <br>that's gone before noon<br>and some like water on the moon.<br>The flowing of the river <br>summoned by the sea<br>to the source of its coming and going<br>is the calling of life everywhere<br>to transcend itself <br>by passing into the unknown<br>like the available dimension of a future <br>that's no further beyond us <br>than the past is <br>in the light of distant stars.<br> <br>The sword doesn't wound itself.<br>Fire doesn't burn itself. <br>Water doesn't drown in itself. <br>And life doesn't bleed out of itself<br>like the dream of a fortune-telling poppy <br>or a water clock that's run itself to ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The eye isn't the seeing.<br>The ear isn't the hearing.<br>The tongue isn't the tasting. <br>The skin isn't the touching.<br>The voice isn't the saying.<br>The brain isn't the thinking.<br>The heart isn't the feeling<br>anymore than life <br>is the carrying in <br>and death is the bearing out.<br>The darkness isn't a lack of light<br>and the light isn't the absence of night. <br>Death is unborn.<br>Life is unperishing. <br>Formless in a world of forms.<br>Two wavelengths of the same awareness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You say you can see night gathering <br>under the door you're afraid to answer<br>long before anyone knocks <br>and though you dream by your own light <br>you don't know who's casting the shadows.<br>Is sorrow any younger in the heart of a child <br>than it is in the memory of an old man? <br>Joy any less vivid in the eyes of an old woman <br>attending to the flowers in her garden <br>than it is in a girl having tea with her dolls? <br>Is this day not as new to the widow <br>as it is to the newly-wed? <br>Experience is the capstone and dunce-cap<br>of the sum of destructions <br>that made us who we are today.<br>And in life it's the brilliance of our failures <br>that throws more light on the dark matter <br>of the issue before us<br>than all the star power <br>of the blazing successes<br>that blind us to our own shining.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You step out of a backlit doorway <br>into the dark <br>and slowly the darkness grows <br>the eyes you need to see the stars.<br>And maybe death is like that. <br>Nothing to look at but black <br>until we blow the candle out <br>that's been misleading us all the way. <br>Maybe that's why the jaws of skulls <br>are always caught gaping at something <br>that's more than they can say.<br>But look at the expressions on their faces.<br>Maybe their eyes <br>are too overwhelmed by what they're seeing<br>to want to get in the way.<br>You could see it like that. <br>You could see it through the eyes of the rain. <br>You can taste it on the tongue of a candle flame. <br>You can read it from right to left <br>in the Kufic script of the wind.<br>You can hear it in what the stars are whispering<br>through the keyholes in the pyramids.<br>You can feel it all around you <br>like bubbles of skin and air.<br>Like empty rooms with atmosphere. <br>As many ways and roads and rivers as there are <br>that flow into it down the world mountain<br>back to the sea <br>back to the same undifferentiated watershed <br>of these myriads of mystic specificity<br>and who could number them all<br>as many as the stars <br>or all the grains of sand <br>of all the deserts and beaches on earth<br>as many as the dead of every kind who've come and gone<br>all that blood mind passion dream and imagination <br>all those tears all that despair lucidity and apprehension<br>love and familial affection<br>all that waste and hatred and emotional sewage<br>dissolved wholly back into the sea <br>like a watercolour left out in the rain <br>like a name written on water <br>by a poet who died young <br>in a foreign language far away from home<br>just as birth arrays the universe before us <br>and says make of it what you can<br>so death approaches no less a peer of life <br>than we are in our relationship with all things<br>and offers us <br>the same great creative opportunity life does.<br>Green bough. <br>Dead branch. <br>Sunset. <br>Moon rise. <br>The hidden night bird alights<br>on either alike<br>and folding its wings<br>like gates and books<br>and the eyelids of those who dream<br>at the beginning and end <br>of a long dark radiant journey, <br>sings.</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=476974" data-title="Things Might Be Drifting Away de Patrick White" data-description="Things might be drifting away 
like an empty lifeboat 
with nothing left to save
but the memory of moonlight
on the rush of a wave of the heart 
that rose and fell 
like a bell of insight on the night watch
that said all's well all's well for the ..."></div>
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