Patrick White

Does The Eye Of The Rain

Does the eye of the rain know it's a tear?
Does that ray of light know
that even at night
it's a revolutionary among flowers?
Between the giver and the given
between a human and his god
between a human and her void
the gift of a gift of a gift.
And the gifts aren't hidden
even when you cover your eyes.
I saw a baglady the other day
who hadn't given it all away yet
who was positively beatific
in an atmosphere
that only she could breathe
but the shining under her rags
told me she lived on light.
She was a waterlily in a swamp.
And I wondered if she knew it.
What I don't know I intuit
so even if she did
how could that add
one dropp of bliss
to an abyss that was already full?
Experience makes a gift of a school.
The blossom grants the apple its absence.
The wind is Johnny Appleseed.
Or the mad old farmer at the end of his life
that was seen hanging on to the tail
of a black bull
in the backwoods of Westport
sowing the groves with grain.
So the birches had bread
he gave away his brain.
So the dead know
we haven't departed
we leave them our pain
in the company of flowers.
Things don't have origins.
They have givers.
Even in math
giving is an axiomatic fact.
Does the sumac know it's a phoenix in the fall?
The lifework of a universe
in every eyelash
in every bud on the locust tree
in every branch of coral on the moon.
If the all were not whole in the least of us
all things would cease to exist.
Life wouldn't be possible
if it ever short-changed itself,
watered a gram,
diluted the whiskey
thinned our blood like a mosquito.
Life would be an also-ran
that didn't quite make it to the moon.
Does the stone
that forged it out of fire and iron
know it's giving Excalibur
back to the water?
Or the magician his wand?
The diviner his witching rod?
The poet his computer?
Giving isn't a moral vow
you make to the universe.
It's the way we survive.
Say one word truly in any language
and you've endowed the gift of speech
on inanimate things that were mute
about all the things they had to tell you
in your own voice.
This is not mysticism.
This is not science.
This is not the Uncertainty Principle
of some random atomic spiritual life.
I'm not drinking my reflection
from the wellspring of a mirror.
It's as clear as a chandelier.
You can't keep
what you won't give away.
And it isn't the giver.
It isn't the given.
It's the giving that's crucial.
The Buddha gave Ananda a rose.
I don't know what kind of flower it was for sure
but let's suppose.
It isn't the rose that's famous
it's the giving that has come down to us
through the years
thorns and all
heart to heart
hand to hand
human to human
rose petals on the mindstream.
The enlightened dreams
of an unattainable man.
If you're cosmic ice,
absolute Kelvin,
dispassionate as entropy,
profound as blue glass
to an ancient Roman
you're still not sublime
until you learn to give it all away.
Empty the urns of the fireflies
like the ghosts of earthbound insights
and scatter their ashes on the wind
and they'll tell you how
to light the night up
and play like water
that doesn't know how to live any other way.
Giving took water for a body
as soon as it saw how beautiful
the wild iris and blue narcissus were.
Wisdom is water.
Compassion is water.
And there's no end of the modes of it.
Water is the light's favourite mirror.
And the most fun.
And what are we
if not clouds
if not wombs
cut off from the sea like kites,
if not sacks of water,
fruit that leaks like a crucified pear
hoping if we've got to be poured out of ourselves
like pitchers
it's over a garden.
Chandeliers of rain when we cry,
even the windows have learned
to weep along with us,
glaciers and glass,
slow inexorable tears
that like to linger on the past
as if their futures weren't the past
just gone on ahead of them
to greet them when they come.
Like a garden in the fall
that gives what it's got left to the birds,
However you think
you've emptied the cup of the moon,
such is the generosity of water
there's always one last
unfathomable watershed of a dropp left
to give back to the water-giver.
And when you do
pour it away from you
like Dogen Zenji
or someone who has drunk their fill
in a single gulp of the bowl of their skull
as a sign of respect for the river.

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David Bowie

Looking for Water

Still the leaves are spinning 'round
Take my hand as we go down, and down, and down
Looking for water
Well, our light's gone in a New York minute
Don't know about you, but my heart's not in it
(Looking, looking, looking)
I'm looking for water
I'm looking for water
(Looking, looking, looking)
I can't breathe the air, can't raise a fact
'Cause all we've got left is a beat in the night, and I'm
(Looking for water)
Looking for water
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
Take my hand as we go down, and down
Leave it all behind, nothing could be found
(I'm, looking for water)
I'm looking for water
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
(I, looking for water)
Looking everywhere
(Looking for water)
Looking here and there
(I'm looking for water)
I'm looking for water
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
I can't live in this cage, I can't eat this candy
The edge of the earth to the spin in my head
The look in your eyes and never means never
The dawn's early light, baby, dark is forever
(Looking, looking)
(Looking, looking)
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
I
(Looking for water)
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
I
(Looking for water)
(Looking for water)
(Looking, looking)
I
(Looking for water)
(Looking for watter)
Looking, looking)
I
(Looking for water)
(Looking for watter)
Looking, looking)
I
(Looking for water)
(Looking for watter)

song performed by by David Bowie, music by David Bowie, lyrics by David Bowie from RealityReport problemRelated quotes
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A Request To The Dead

I offer this water to you,
my father, grandfather and great grandfather,
and to you, soldiers and generals
who fought for us and who fought against us
and who were killed by this war.

I stand here, on this battlefield,
and give this water and this rice to you—
you must be hungry and thirsty.

Ask for nothing
other than water and rice,
don't add to the long list
of things I was not able to give;
be content with this water and this rice
and return
to wherever you came from.

Consider this: the years
I have spent with you were many;
and this: it will not be long
before I join you wherever you sojourn.
Had I possessed things
other than this water and this rice,
would I have denied them to you
and asked you to return ?
Whatever I have
other than this water and this rice
are surely not appropriate offerings
for departed souls.

True, I traverse everyday of my life
with this baggage of witheld things,
but whenever I look at them
I disintegrate and cry out
with a voice that rends
the heavens
and the underworld.
Tears fill my eyes
when I make this offering
of water and rice.
I know, when my turn comes,
I shall have neither.

Look, the sun has almost set.
Now, go back to wherever you came from
with the little water and the little rice I gave you.
Look, I myself do not have
either any water or any rice.
Look, I have nothing except the few things
I didn't give
and kept with myself.

[Translated by the poet]

poem by Ramakanta RathReport problemRelated quotes
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4. Elements – Water

Water an elemental
Water a fundamental
Building block of life
Water of Life
Water of Death

Water in all religions
Water in all living things
Water in all countries
Water also used for barter

No life without water
No rife with water
No respect for water
Willful neglect of water

Water, for cooking
Water, for cleaning
Water, for drinking
Water, for living
Water, for dying

Water is the same
In all languages
Water is the same
To all living beings

poem by Anand DixitReport problemRelated quotes
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Patrick White

Tenderly The Evening Descends Into A Dark Bliss

Tenderly the evening descends into a dark bliss
and lays its poultice like a cool leaf against my forehead
and draws the fever of the day out of the night.
I ease back on my elbows like an easel down by the river.
When I'm burnt, I make a blister
and cushion myself with water,
a more useful approach to tears.
The mosquitoes swarm like insistent circumstances
that thin my blood, but a soft wind
is blowing them away from Pearl Harbour.
The long blue grass yields as easily to a man as a deer.
I want the stars near enough to overhear what they're whispering.
Still amazing to me I can embrace all of them with a thought
as if they were my idea in the first place
and feel humbled and exalted at the same time
by the sublimity of their radiance and the strangeness of my own.
The river sustains its clarity by wandering.

Single male in the autumn of life, I've let go of so much
the only thing left to let go of is the letting go itself.
I've forgone the commotion of inducing myself into creation.
Things will fall out by themselves. Playfulness
return to surrealistic perversity
to explain the shape of the universe
and fools like me counter-intuit the crazy wisdom
of squandering their lives on voices in the distance
leading them on deeper into the subtleties of a poetic narcosis
that haunts them like the face
of a beautiful woman they once knew.
Don't we all belong to a nobility of longing, even though
we don't live up to it, and start to grasp and scratch
like dead branches screeching across
an intransigent windowpane on a stormy night
that let's us look at the fire, but doesn't let us in?
Where do you go with your serious spirit
when you've been rejected by your solitude?
Do you know the secret art of being enhanced
by the qualities of anything you're not attached to,
without killing off the desire for what you're missing?
Live with gratitude for the abyss in your heart
it's impossible to fill like a grave
that took more out of you than it put back in.

You can be adorned by your failures.
You can be humiliated by your victories.
Coming and going, your path can be strewn
with roses or thorns. You could be walking on stars.
You could be lying down beside a river at night like I am
savouring a sorrow you like the poetic taste of,
because it includes everything within it
like the skin of the dew and the moon as the source of life.
Even sweeter than a rainbow body of light
or an atmosphere with ocean to match,
this last touch of clinging before you evaporate
into the mystery of everything you're leaving behind.
No more than you can pour water out of the universe
through a black hole, can your mindstream be poured by time
into the uncomprehending darkness of the black mirror
you're looking for an image in tonight
in the eyes of all these stars shining down upon us,
knowing our starmud is just as old as their light
and we're not wandering orphans lost in their shadows.
We're firewalking on water like stars in the shapes
of self-immolating swans, two parts flammable
from the start, and one of oxygen like a toxin
we depend upon for life like an alien export we adapted to.
Same with death. Until you include it in the nucleus,
inviting your enemy in to feast behind the gates
that laboured like water to keep life in the seas,
you're vulnerable to the delusion of your own exclusion
like the face of an exile in your mirroring awareness.

Don't underestimate the creative potential
of the dark genius of death to come up
with new paradigms of seeing and being
that make us feel we lived our whole lives
confined and blind in the coffin of a seed
that stored a harvest of what we've reaped in a silo.
Out of the dead ore of the moon
pours the white gold of wheat
like metal from a stone in a starfield
that yields more life than can be lost
in the living of it. Without a sword. Without a ploughshare.
Isn't it in the nature of our evanescence to move
like light and water and wind from urn to urn
of one sky burial to the next at sea and then the earth
like a water clock that runs so urgently
from full to an emptiness that has to keep expanding
like the human heart just to contain it
so when the cup's broken like a skull
you can drink the whole of the sea and the sky
in every single dropp of your mindstream
and the stars will still be climbing your roots
up to the flowers within that bloom every year
like a deepening insight at zenith into
the dark generosity of becoming something
even beyond the scope of death to imagine extinct.

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Wild Montana Skies

(john denver)
He was born in the bitteroot valley in the early morning rain
Wild geese over the water, heading north and home again
Bringin a warm wind from the south, bringin
The first taste of the spring
His mother took him to her breast and softly she did sing:
Oh, montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
His mother died that summer and he never learned to cry
He never knew his father and he never did ask why
He never knew the answers that would make an easy way
But he learned to know the wilderness and to be a man that way
His mothers brother took him in to his family and his home
Gave him a hand that he could lean on and a strength to call his own
And he learned to be a farmer and he learned to love the land
And he learned to read the seasons and he learned to make a stand
On the eve of his 21st birthday, he set out on his own
He was 30 years and runnin when he found his way back home
Ridin a storm across the mountains and an achin in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages and to make a brand new start
Now he never told the story of the time that he was gone
Some say he was a lawyer, some say he was a john
There was something in the city that he said he couldnt breathe
There was something in the country that he said he couldnt leave
Now some say he was crazy and some are glad hes gone
But some of us will miss him and well try to carry on
Giving a voice to the forest, giving a voice to the dawn
Giving a voice to the wilderness and the land that he lived on

song performed by by Emmylou HarrisReport problemRelated quotes
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Wild Montana Skies (feat. John Denver)

(John Denver)
He was born in the Bitteroot Valley in the early morning rain
Wild geese over the water, heading north and home again
Bringin' a warm wind from the south, bringin'
the first taste of the spring
His mother took him to her breast and softly she did sing:
Oh, Montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild Montana skies
His mother died that summer and he never learned to cry
He never knew his father and he never did ask why
He never knew the answers that would make an easy way
But he learned to know the wilderness and to be a man that way
His mother's brother took him in to his family and his home
Gave him a hand that he could lean on and a strength to call his own
And he learned to be a farmer and he learned to love the land
And he learned to read the seasons and he learned to make a stand
On the eve of his 21st birthday, he set out on his own
He was 30 years and runnin' when he found his way back home
Ridin' a storm across the mountains and an achin' in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages and to make a brand new start
Now he never told the story of the time that he was gone
Some say he was a lawyer, some say he was a john
There was something in the city that he said he couldn't breathe
There was something in the country that he said he couldn't leave
Now some say he was crazy and some are glad he's gone
But some of us will miss him and we'll try to carry on
Giving a voice to the forest, giving a voice to the dawn
Giving a voice to the wilderness and the land that he lived on

song performed by by Emmylou HarrisReport problemRelated quotes
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Obvious Gift

gifts lead every hearts to go nearer to what
the soul reunited in your emotion, a value that
penny can't buy something that the spirited soul
makes; what the world made it wonderful, diluted
to lay everything, just to risen the ageless motion of
self giving

everything is move and cease to believe, what
makes it to begin as the clouds, since in time of
memorial floats in the sky, where and where it goes,
as the rain drops and wet flowering seeds to grow
and leads fiddler of insect to feed and learn to live,
with no one guide the beginning of survival

obvious gift never ends it always flows, like
stream in the highest mountains that always look a
distance way to settle the fresh hyacinth of cool water,
for a gift of rejoicing takes an everlasting memory
to remember

life as gift, always take a foundation to craft, beautiful
and stronger pillar making it more acceptable to live,
of what every soul ponder, shading the past into the future
of today; as the day comes to an end, remembering is a
heart to believe that all is just nothing but a special gift
ready to be shared to the out most of you, a love in your
life

an immortal gift, willing to give and release, not as
poison in you for other to live, but a perfume to smell
so that other may grow and ignited to refresh, for
life is but, an endless will of feeling but a power in you,
wonting to make the best of what is life

a gift is not a gift unless it is shared; obvious it may looks,
yet! its obvious if it may not be shared the gift in you….be
a gift to other

poem by Antonio LiaoReport problemRelated quotes
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Patrick White

I Don't Think The Wind Sings For Me Alone

I don't think the wind sings for me alone
even in this isolated space where it
silvers the leaves of the Russian olives
like musical scales. Or every thought and emotion,
every image, symbol, or insight
shares the same myth of origin that I do.
Nor all the words that I call my native language
weren't rooted first in someone else's garden.
As the air I breathe was, as the light that has entered
through many more eyes than mine. What I hear
doesn't belong to me, nor what I see,
my private vision. But when I don't grasp
at clouds and water, everything is my reflection
looking back at me as if there were no one there.

I disappear. And I feel my presence everywhere
as real as the sceptres of Queen Anne's Lace
growing old in the moonlight, or the blue fury
of the wild irises burning in their own fires
like the Pleiades. Who can understand
the circuitous wanderings of the mindstream
white water rafting its own axons in an empty lifeboat
when even the questions you raise about it are not your own?
I may well be that, but tonight, I'm not personally involved.
Things occur like spiritual events. The rat snake
strikes the frog, the shadow flash of a bird
transits the moon. Arcturus descends
before the Summer Triangle with the easy grace
of a light that doesn't realize it's being observed intensely.

And I wonder if we're actualizing each other
in some interdependently original way
that it knows as little about as I do.
Or the dead birch tree that's standing by both of us,
naked in its bones as a fan of coral.
Silly man, now you know how a fly
up against a window feels. Or how a mirror
that's deeper than either your eyes
or the light can see into, keeps its appeal.
Been wondering most of my life
in an aloof but wary mode of gratitude
about the great symphony of love and light and light,
like someone who's been hurt by someone they cherish
without knowing why. And whether to laugh or weep
at the absurd tragicomedies that keep appearing
like vulnerable mushrooms in my sleep.

But tonight, tonight, all I want to hear
is the whisper of a dropp of water running down the sluice
of a blade of stargrass. The eerie rustling of the leaves
as if the trees had something to say to me
about my presence among them that leaves me
half again as estranged as when I first came here
to enjoy a freedom that isn't just a matter of changing gates.

Sad man, but tonight I dance with thousands of waterlilies
under the chandeliers of the stars, in three four time,
as if I just remembered how to waltz with the bride
and bow to a flower like a lunar violin. My heart
doesn't look for its reflection in the fire pit
where I burnt all my life masks like straw dogs
when the sacred ritual was over. I denuded myself
basking in the clear light of the void, until
there was no one left, not even me, to notice.

poem by Patrick WhiteReport problemRelated quotes
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One That Was Not Sought

A gift is given...
Without an ego displayed,
By the giver attached.

The receiver of the gift...
Believing there to be more,
To this giving...
Than something as simple,
As that!

And...
The gift given is given back.
With sarcastic remarks...
And other unnecessary verbal attacks.

The giver of the gift,
Although offended by this...
Keeps a head straight on shoulders.
And makes only forward steps.

With a lesson learned...
And not a temper to display,
The gift giver never shows a disappointment.
Or has a thing to say.

Knowing that a wisdom,
Came as a surprise lesson taught.
From a teacher in disguise.
And from one that was not sought.

poem by Lawrence S. PertillarReport problemRelated quotes
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Wild Montana Skies

This song appears on nine albums, and was first released on the its about time album, and has also been released on the greatest hits vol 3, changes, the very best of john denver (double cd),
Ry classics, the country roads collection and the rocky mountain collection albums. a live version also appears on the wildlife concert and the best of john denver live albums.
He was born in the bitterroot valley in the early morning rain
Wild geese over the water headin north and home again
Bringin a warm wind from the south
Bringin the first taste of the spring
His mother took him to her breast and softly she did sing
Oh montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
His mother died that summer and he never learned to cry
He never knew his father and he never did ask why
He never knew the answers that would make an easy way
But he learned to know the wilderness and to be a man that way
His mothers brother took him in to family and his home
Gave him a hand that he could lean on and a strength to call his own
And he learned to be a farmer and he learned to love the land
And he learned to read the seasons and he learned to make a stand
Oh montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
On the eve of his 21st birthday he set out on his own
He was 30 years and runnin when he found his way back home
Ridin a storm across the mountains and an aching in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages and to make a brand new start
Now he never told a story of the time that he was gone
Some say he was a lawyer, some say he was a john
There was somethin in the city that he said he couldnt breathe
And there was somethin in the country that he said he couldnt leave
Oh montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
Now some say he was crazy and theyre glad that he is gone
But some of us miss him and well try to carry on
Giving a voice to the forest, giving a voice to the dawn
Giving a voice to the wilderness and the land that he lived on
Oh montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
Oh montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild montana skies
Words and music by john denver

song performed by by John DenverReport problemRelated quotes
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Water Vortex

It's hot on the river walk
Where to River? Play in new clothes
And rivers, remote back over at a friend inside.

Words to break the outer covering tears
What is the path to climb stricken with hardship Play
The sweet cruelty
Stone water fall flowing all evening
Away drag it out of the river
Danaya the birds glow, deep sigh Anonymous
And tears of your feet and flowers in water
Stand up to water, the loneliness at school.

You know, water's water, water vortex breakdown silence
None of the ship's mast Tear
The Black Keys pray for rain at night?

I was crying, asking plunged music.

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Pain Giving Water

My heart aches from an Attack
of loneliness
brought forth by a pain giving water
water I drank willingly in hopes it would quench my thirst
Oh how I was fooled by that short moment of relief
Cool and refreshing, moist and Satisfying
Then it was over
Leaving me thirsty once more with no water to drink
I kept asking for more of the water I drank but there was none left
I pleaded, I begged, I sobbed, and I moaned but still no water
Now left dehydrated I press on in search of new water But
hurt so much I wonder how Much Longer
I can go on
Were is my water?

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Patrick White

You Never Became A Memory

You never became a memory.
You remain as you are in my life.
A living compassionate presence.
I have forgotten more of me
than I ever could of you.
Whenever I want to see beyond the light
I see through your eyes
everything you wanted to show me
that was not petty or tragic or cruel.
I was a profound fool
but you taught me how
to add my darkness to the night
to enhance the shining.
And even now
when things aren't flowering well
I still reach out for you by deepening my roots.
As if I could touch your face again
like a muse of water
lost in her own reflection.
As if I could ignite the same fires again
that blossomed on the dead branch
of the witching wand
that inspired the stars
who thought they had seen everything
to marvel at their own perfection in you.
Inspiratrix of the blue waterstars
that burned like chandeliers
among the constellations of the lilies
pluming themselves like swans
in the feathers of the moon,
how I long to be eclipsed and enlightened again
like a chameleon reflecting the mood of your beauty
as I did before these windows came
like glass-eyed calendars between us
to prove that time isn't space. It's pain.
And change is an absolute
that doesn't like its relatives.
My angel misses you.
My demon misses you
so badly at times
I can't look into the abyss for long
without impeaching my mind
for its awareness of an emptiness
that aches like an existential absurdity
to be put out of its misery
for being born blind deaf and dumb
about whose wind on the waters is rocking
the cradles and crucibles of creation.
The Medusa holds her tits out
like snakepits and grails
and I never know which one to drink from
or if the poison and the antidote
are just the opposite fangs of the moon
as it grows through its waxing and waning
as if a physician found a way
of healing herself
by sloughing her wounds like skin.
The mindstream weaves its way at night
like a garden snake
through myriad blades of grass
like the shuttle of a loom
that doesn't know what theme of life
unspools in the flowing.
And my eyes miss you like light.
I'm a lighthouse on the shore of a dead sea
trying to walk on water like the moon
as the waves chip away at me
like shale flakes off the cold stone
that edges slowly through my heart like a thorn.
And it may make a king of me
to draw the sword out of the stone
but that doesn't close the wound
of having first to fall upon it
to vacate my throne with honour.
If life is the truth
then lying is the only way
to describe death to a god
who doesn't understand it.
What's a church without gravestones?
Aspiration without an expiry date?
And so many different kinds of death
not enough generations of humans
have been born yet to know them all.
Death tries to trivialize the relative
as if the things I miss most about you
had never been.
But your mindwaters are mingled with mine inextricably
like the shoreless starstreams of space
panning for planets in our flowing
we might live on
and have our being and our breath
unblighted by loss. Separation. Death.
And there is no more of the sadness
I used to see in your eyes
as if they were my own
that I still see everywhere in the eyes of all living things
when I know as you would have had me know
as clearly as you did
that even though the neverness
of implacable circumstances and lost last chances
may have separated us like the threads of the rope
you used to climb up to heaven before me
like one who took the short-cut
and one who took the long way home through these starfields
taking his painful time
like the unfulfilled hope of a child
he's not alone when he opens his eyes
like a dream within a dream
that looks but can't find him,
you can polish the missing into a mirror
and wait like a fox by a black hole for things to appear
that will never be the same again
or you can open your tears like windows
and let out the birds of pain
that I have kept as close to me
as the whisper of your voice
in this cold, dark chimney
telling me to let you go as I do now
to rejoice on the dead branch and the green bough
like the flower and flame
of what became of us.
We cannot be the song or the singer
for very long
as our voices dim like candles in the darkness
that have given it all away.
And as you used to say
as if it would always be today without you
and all we have given is all we could keep of each other
like water returned to the river
we raised to our lips to taste
the sad, last drops
of these eyeless elixirs of the moon
that linger like vapours
in the empty goblets of the morning glory,
and I need to believe you more than I do
in this neverness of now
that has come before me without a beyond
or a word from all that has irrevocably gone.
Yes. But the singing. That goes on.

poem by Patrick WhiteReport problemRelated quotes
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Art of Water

whether lot, whether little
whether cold, whether hot
whether thirst, whether not
water is always needed

whether clean, whether dirty
in the land, in the ocean
whether flood, whether dry
water is always problem

rain river, static puddle
hidden in the desert, moist in the forest
frost on mountain, vapor to clouds
water is everywhere

playable, making war
doesn't have taste, doesn't have color
you can live or you can die
water is sign of life

the element, the anomaly
build energy, fill the body
the circle, the reflection
water is word of power

poem by Maria SudibyoReport problemRelated quotes
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The Stolen Child

(wb yeats)
Come away, human child
To the water
Come away, human child
To the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand
Where dips the rocky highland
Of sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There weve hid our faery vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries
Come away, human child
To the water
Come away, human child
To the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep
Come away, human child
To the water
Come away, human child
To the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above glen-car
In pools among the rushes
The scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
We give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams
Away with us hes going
The solemn-eyed:
Hell hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside;
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Around and around the oatmeal-chest
For he comes, the human child
To the water
He comes, the human child
To the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand
Human child
Human child
With a faery, hand in hand
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand...
Than he can understand...
He can understand...

song performed by by WaterboysReport problemRelated quotes
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My Rose...

gift you a rose, ,
gift you my rose....
but my rose to you, is not like any rose in this world...
a rose drunk from my tears...
a rose that i take care about it by my soul...
a rose gave it a water by my blood...
and perfumed it by my love....

my rose to you, is not like an roses...
its color not like any colors...
its not a red...
and its not a white...
even not a yellow...
its color pick up from the suns` yellow color..
and mix from the seas` blue color...
and from my bloods` drops..
and from my tears...
so.. its color was mixed with my sadness and my love...

my rose to you, is not like any roses...
its perfume is not like any perfume..
its a mix between a loves` nectar...
and many of kindness, and honesty love...

my rose to you, is not like any roses...
raised inside my heart...
and takes a warm light, from my eyes` light...
and its food, from the hope, that we always wish...
and from our future, which will gather us to each others one day...
so please accept and take my rose...

poem by Hazem Al JaberReport problemRelated quotes
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GOD The Farmer

(4/14/12)

We live to love - we love to live
There is so much we have to give.
For every seed that GOD has planted
Another life has been granted.

Every seed on this earth
Will create a brand new birth.
He is the farmer - the giver of life
The crops he plants will suffice.

He planted the stars that shine at night
Gave us the sun - hot and bright.
He gave us water to quench our thirst
And gave us this water to cleanse the earth.

He planted seeds of knowledge in our brains
So if we had to - we could make the change.
He planted the seeds in the female wombs
So that life would not end to soon.

These are some of the things this farmer has given
He has made this life worth living.

poem by Louis RamsReport problemRelated quotes
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At The Balcony

from here
i see the blue sea and the old bamboo raft floating in the water

over there is a mountain of stone
with patches of green resistant grass

the coconut trees are tall and thin
and the wooden boats are docked

the men are drinking their tequilas
away from their masters and the owners of their fates

the women are doing their laundry on the river
and the children are splashing in the shallow water

some dogs waggle their tails afraid of the water
i am alone here with a camera on hand

my cell phone is turned off
i am out of reach, i am not lost, i am trying to find a way

back into my heart
feeling what my soul wants to say

i feast on the view that this balcony is giving me
i savor what God is giving freely.

poem by Ric S. BastasaReport problemRelated quotes
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Splash!

Splashing water, Water get,
Shooting jets, Getting wet,
Crystal Clear, Cool Water,
Water, Water, Water matter,
Water's Life, Water let
Living life, Keep alive.
Water, water, we survive.

poem by Philo YanReport problemRelated quotes
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Patrick White

I Stand Where The Listening Begins

I stand where the listening begins
as if my voice were just another one of the echoes
and my tongue were the tip of an edgy precipice
that doesn't dare make a move
over an immeasurable abyss of eyes
that nobody belongs to.
This is a seeing that's older than the stars
that were born of it
like a mirror is born of the shining.
Like a body is born of the mind
and takes on the shape of a universe
as an expressionist gesture of classical reserve.
In the great ocean of being before it turned into everyone
our eyes weren't beaded like two drops of water
strung through our nose
like a statement we were trying to make.
They were waves.
Waves of water.
Waves of light.
Waves of thought and feeling.
They were waterbirds that came and went
without leaving.
They were meteorological events
in the emotional life of the sea
when it played alone with itself like weather.
We didn't evolve hands to prove we had a grip on things.
We didn't evolve brains to prove we were intelligent.
We're not nuggets of insight
panned from the mindstream
that runs down the world mountain
in a rush of gold.
I stand where I can hear the night
breathing like a shadow in its own darkness
and whatever I am not
is as real as whatever I am.
And my sorrows dropp away
like the black fruit of ruined bells
and my joys know a freedom
no holy war ever deserved.
Here my death answers to my life
and not the other way around.
My beginnings are not justified by my ends
and my solitude is so wholly itself
it embraces everything
as if it were space
and time were its only friend.
This is a poetic state.
A dynamic mode of creative annihilation.
This is a phoenix blooming in its own fire.
This is life.
This is the universe full of bright ideas
that come to it like stars in the darkness.
This is the white mare of the full moon in the high field
with the gates open
like wings growing out of her shoulders.
This is a space that is so spontaneously immediate
that you receive the reply
long before you've even asked the question.
It doesn't take thousands of thoughtyears
for the light to get here.
A flower blooms.
A star comes out.
It's as simple as that.
You lift one veil of the mystery like an eyelid.
Nothing has a history.
The old man remembers nothing.
The old woman forgets her name.
Once they were seabeds of meaning.
Now they're just water.
And everything is ok with that.
People go grey
and turn into clouds in the mountains
just to catch the last of the light
and give their lives some colour.
And then it's night again
and the dancing chandeliers of the stars
that are burning like legends
to make a name and a myth for themselves
fall like constellations to earth
and shatter like the rainbows of youth.
Every dawn has a taste of the sunset in it.
What's the end of anything
if not the dark side of its beginnings?
I am the fool of a freedom
that lets things be whatever they want to be
deep within the heavy fruit of a compassionate heart
that ripens in its own lucidity.
There are worms.
There are birds.
There's a green star in the apple core.
My skin is the chameleon of the sun going down.
I know how to swim through stone and water.
There are fish in my treetops
and birds in my roots
and when I drown
it's the sun in the sea
and nothing ever really goes out.
Everytime I open my mouth to sing
this is where the muse
puts a finger to her lips
to teach me what I'm talking about.
I'm a star when I write.
First I let go of the light.
And then the children point fingers at me
and say in mutual recognition
of the stories they make up on the go
there you are
just as we foretold.
It's the same way with water
when it's lost in a desert of sand and stars.
Sometimes it takes a mirage to find your way home.
Death gapes like the jawbone of a mummy
and writes like a pyramid
as if it wanted to make all things last forever.
But when life picks up the pen
around the fires of the stars
to whisper into its own ear
things that only solitude
can suggest to the night
its poems are always tents on the move.
The moon sailing paper lifeboats down a river
like waterlilies
blooming in the pale flames
of their lunar immolations
as if each were a white phoenix
rising above its own ashes and smoke
like someone dreaming of swans.

poem by Patrick WhiteReport problemRelated quotes
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