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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477031" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>When You Look At A Star</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When you look at a star <br>can you see <br>how the night leaves <br>the intimate doors <br>of intuitive eventuality ajar? <br>I'm all future with a prophetic past.<br>Aviomantic signs of liberated doves. <br>So many lifespans in a single moment.<br>How many light-years to the nearest star? <br>And how many shadows back? <br>Trying to say the inexpressible in words is like <br>to trying to thaw a snowstorm <br>on the tip of your tongue<br>flake by flake syllabically<br>or trying to explain bubbles to a glacier<br>in a momentary suspension of disbelief. <br>When you look at a star<br>do you see <br>that's it's you <br>that's shining up that far<br>and it's you down here <br>receiving your own light back like a ball<br>you made of your childhood <br>and threw up in the air <br>like a celestial sphere<br>when you had <br>all the time in the world <br>to come back and catch it later? <br>And as I grew older<br>not waiting for it to come back down<br>I learned to play vertical pool with the stars<br>to move things around <br>that were once considered fixed.<br>When you look at a star <br>if you want to clear the table <br>if you want to make the longshot<br>if you want to change the birthmark of misfortune<br>into an upturned elephant trunk of good luck <br>you have to chalk the cue with your skull.<br>But I ask you earnestly<br>if no one's ever failed their death <br>is it probable <br>anyone's ever failed their life<br>despite what their tears and fears have told them<br>about where they've ended up? <br>But a good beginning doesn't lead to a good end<br>because a good beginning never stops.<br>A good beginning is without conclusion.<br>It doesn't need to look beyond itself<br>because nothing's missing from the very start.<br>When you look at a star <br>do you see the ancient wisdom <br>in a child's heart<br>do you feel the depth <br>of all the eyes that have looked at it before<br>with longing wonder and sorrow<br>asking you to give them some direction <br>by adding yourself like another dimension to the past? <br>Is there a firefly of human suffering <br>mingled in the shining? <br>A window makes a better starmap <br>than a ten inch mirror <br>in a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflecting telescope <br>on an equatorial mount with clock drive<br>following them around like paparazzi<br>but when the stars want to know <br>where they're at<br>it's your eyes they parallax<br>at both ends <br>of the wingspan of your orbit.<br>It's your seeing that gives them a fix. <br>The same eye by which I see God <br>is the eye by which God sees me. <br>It's the same with everything<br>from fireflies to supernovas. <br>The donkey looks into the well. <br>The well looks back at the donkey. <br>Tat tvam asi. <br>You are that. <br>The lampshade and the blue parrot.<br>The donkey and the carrot.<br>When you look at a star <br>do you dress your destiny up<br>in hand-me-down constellations <br>like clothes you'll grow into one day <br>or do you wear them like patchs on myths<br>you're trying to give up <br>about how rough it's been<br>to be chosen beauty queen <br>and bear the diamond tiara of the Pleiades<br>like the Northern Crown? <br>When you look at a star <br>is it the chip of a broken mirror <br>the plinth of a shattered chandelier <br>the Holy Ghost of fireflies <br>a fire-womb of immaculate fusions<br>that bear the transgender features <br>of their ancestral elements<br>like Abrahamic hydrogen? <br>A burning bush <br>in the valley of Tuwa <br>that eventually talks itself out like a candle <br>when the conversation begins to harden<br>like an auditory hallucination <br>into a puddle <br>of earwax shadows and wicks? <br>Or do you discern something more <br>you can't quite put your finger on <br>or point to <br>not a presence <br>but there <br>an absence <br>but everywhere <br>and you standing there <br>like this tiny insight <br>with the precipitous extremeties <br>of a human being <br>trying to discover your own nature <br>in the inexplicability of all that shining<br>wondering if the rumours of awareness <br>the universe has been spreading about you <br>are true or not? <br>When you look at a star <br>have you ever thought<br>if mass is energy <br>maybe matter is mind <br>and thinking of one <br>as something that has to get over the other <br>is like expecting a wave to transcend water? <br>Light and lamp. <br>Body and mind.<br>Not one of two <br>but two in one<br>and even that's one too much. <br>The flower opens<br>in the light of the sun <br>like a kiss on the eyelid<br>and the sun blooms <br>as if it had a crush on the flower. <br>When you look at a star <br>can you feel how the light <br>touchs your eyes as gently as a butterfly<br>as if all the eyelashs you've lost in a lifetime<br>like the ribbing of broken kites<br>or the spokes of a bike<br>or the straws of overworked brooms <br>had come back to you <br>as a living thing <br>with antennae legs and wings? <br>Have you ever looked at a star <br>and wondered how far away it would be <br>if you were to measure the distance in thought-years? <br>And such a small thing the mind <br>a child's hand <br>and yet within its grasp <br>all that mass black matter energy light space time? <br>How could you fit <br>all those cosmic immensities <br>and the abyss that contains them <br>into such a small place<br>if they weren't your own ideas? <br>When you look at a star <br>do you ever get the feeling <br>you're swimming through your own gene-pool <br>your own meme pool<br>the Pierian spring<br>where it meets the sea <br>at the bottom of your mountain mindstream? <br>When you look at a star <br>do you ever turn the light around <br>and look into yourself <br>through its eyes <br>and realize<br>you've been communing with your own reflection<br>inconceivably<br>for billions of years<br>and that little insight<br>is the cosmic light of awareness<br>that fills the night with everything that is <br>when is is not the opposite of is not<br>and there's no separation in the first atom <br>between thought life light mind matter and form <br>and the lion lies down with the lamb<br>and the old woman says she is not old<br>and the sparrow lays her egg in the serpent's coil<br>and the old man who has seen everything says <br>my eyes are as young now<br>as you were back then <br>and your beauty is today? <br>When I was a boy <br>growing up in a garbage can <br>like a diamond in the rough <br>everyone wanted to cut <br>and buff the edges off<br>to polish me like a lens<br>so everybody could see how focused I was<br>when I looked up at the stars <br>from the bottom of a spent wishing well <br>where you could see them even during the day.<br>Though I was taught <br>they were responsible for my fate <br>and I should blame them for what I am <br>and not the black dwarfs of hate <br>who perverted the space around me<br>like slumlords<br>until even the buds of the flowers <br>were white as the knuckles of clenched fists<br>I never thought for a moment<br>that anything that clean and beautiful <br>that far away <br>from the scene of the crime at the time <br>could ever do anything here <br>that needed an alibi. <br>When I looked at the stars <br>I was enraptured by their mystery. <br>I was exalted by their unattainability <br>and the age of the silence <br>that surrounded their fires<br>knowing they've burned longer <br>than the light has lived <br>and seen more <br>than their eyes can forgive<br>of human life on the planet. <br>And the greatest agony of my childhood <br>from seven till ten<br>such that I would weep<br>my bitterness to sleep every night <br>like a child abandoned to a hospital<br>was that I was born way too early<br>to get to Aldebaran.<br>When I looked at a star <br>I didn't gape like a telescope <br>into the depths of its utter solitude<br>but looked upon it like a far intimacy <br>I could draw near <br>until I could feel it breathing like silver<br>all over the mirror<br>that was as clear <br>as any dark spear <br>that ever wounded a mystic with bliss. <br>Strange whisperings of exiled sages <br>pouring stories of home <br>into a young boy's ear<br>like my mother used to talk about <br>her childhood in Queensland<br>as if she were in the Garden of Eden. <br>When I looked at a star <br>and listened to its picture-music <br>I was so deeply moved<br>by the beauty and sadness of the song<br>like inspiration in utter solitude<br>I went into exile with it here<br>and it was my blossom <br>no wind could blow away <br>and it was my root <br>in the starmud<br>nothing could pull up <br>and throw away.<br>When I looked at a star <br>I was enthralled <br>by the dispassionate attachment <br>and creative dynamic <br>that burned me like a sacrificial heretic<br>in the ice of inspiration. <br>I could forget the small orbit <br>of house arrest <br>that a circumstantial planet <br>had affixed like an electronic anklet around my leg <br>for being born unforgivably poor. <br>When I looked at a star <br>it was as if the flightfeather <br>of a bluewhite fire bird <br>landed on the windowsill of my cell<br>to take pity on me <br>and share its freedom <br>with someone living in a cage.<br>When I looked at a star <br>it was the synteretic spark <br>I sent out like a dove from the ark <br>with two of every mind <br>in the zodiac aboard<br>after forty days of flood <br>to look for Atlantis <br>like the next best thing <br>to Mt. Ararat or Cathay.<br>It was the angel that always looked back <br>with the same mystic fury in its eyes <br>that were in mine <br>when I looked up.<br>When I looked at a star <br>I could prognosticate the future <br>like the distant memory <br>of someone returning to their origins <br>waking up from exile<br>to discover it wasn't a dream. <br>You can tell by the way a star <br>flashs like a panicked chameleon <br>on the event horizon of a blackhole <br>things are what they seem <br>when you're peering through atmospheres <br>with tears in your eyes. <br>I used to make telescopes when I was young. <br>I would grind their pyrex eyes <br>with ever finer grades of carborundum<br>until they could see just right. <br>I shaped their fibre-glass bodies <br>until they were as smooth as a woman's skin. <br>And I took them out into the open fields naked<br>far beyond the intrusions of the city lights <br>and exposed them to the stars<br>who revered them like clear-eyed mirrors<br>and adorned one with leaves <br>and the other with sidereal veils<br>and said like the elders<br>and old midwives of an Ojibway tribe<br>when they name the newborn. <br>This one shall be called Eve.<br>And this one Isis. <br>And to celebrate their birth <br>opened a third eye <br>and said <br>as it is on earth <br>it shall not be in the sky.</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=477031" data-title="When You Look At A Star de Patrick White" data-description="When you look at a star 
can you see 
how the night leaves 
the intimate doors 
of intuitive eventuality ajar? 
I'm all future with a prophetic past.
Aviomantic signs of liberated doves. 
So many lifespans in a single moment.
How many light-years ..."></div>
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