Saturday, May 29, 2010

REDUCED TO COSMIC INSIGNIFICANCE

REDUCED TO COSMIC INSIGNIFICANCE

 

Reduced to cosmic insignificance

by the splendour of the view

I give the world its due magnificence

by wiping the mirror clean of my existence

so I don’t soil the lamp with soot

or cling like oil to the shoreline

like an eclipse that leaked out of a well

or a thick black serpent haemmoraging snake blood.

I don’t stand here

staring up at the stars

like a new millenium of meaning

trying to express things

that haven’t been heard before

like a stranger at the door

flipping through panicked grammars

to let me know the house is on fire

and the nearest clean water’s on the moon.

When you’re not bound by anything

you’re open.

When there’s no truth to seek.

Nothing hidden.

Nothing disclosed.

No longing in the fire.

No fulfillment in the ashes.

You don’t need to know who you are

to be truly human

because the moment you say you’re this

you’re contradicted by that

and you’re not anymore.

You’re drawing up plans

for a building

that already stands before you

like the reflection of the Alhambra on water

like the bones of your body

that arose out of the starmud

to frame you on that cornerstone of blood

that everything else rests upon

like a pyramid by a river that floods

or the wellspring of an oasis in the desert

far far far to the west of the sun

where Venus burns

like a white mare

in the high fields

and just to look up

is to answer the summons

like a Libyan wind from the north.

The universe isn’t trying to reach out to us.

It isn’t trying to preach to us.

It isn’t trying to teach us

anything we didn’t want to learn

about this turn of events

in the deep dark concern

we have for ourselves

when the mirrors turn their backs on us

as if to say

see for yourself

how much has to go on without you.

Selflessness isn’t what’s left

when something that was there is gone.

It isn’t a desert that’s left

after you’ve tasted the water in the oasis

and seen through the mirage that’s been swept away

along with your thirst for delusion.

It isn’t the nihilistic emptiness

of the mind calling out to itself for long years

without ever hearing the echo of its own voice

come back to itself

like a dove

with a sprig of olive in its beak

it carries around with it

as if peace

were the only place left to land.

Selflessness isn’t the taste of the cup

after you’ve drunk the wine.

Selflessness isn’t something to be

something to see

something to become

something to understand

or something you can resist

anymore than you can resist space

because it is the non-existence

of everything that is as it is

inconceivably arrayed before you

like the immeasurable measure of your own mind.

When you’ve lost your way in the dark

and the silence isn’t a friend of yours

and you’re asking the stars

where your eyes have gone

send out the blind

because they’ll find them

faster than those who think they can see.

Dark matter enlightens the ignorance of lucidity.

Dark matter can be things before they happen.

Dark matter is the mother of the world

who gave up her identity

so you could delude yourself into believing

you’re not the same as her to whom

you’re bonded like time to space

whatever you do to escape her embrace.

Dark matter knows

by the emptiness in her heart and womb

that the universe

isn’t a precondition of life

but life is a precondition of the universe.

The dark mother’s emptiness is always full

like a woman who has lost much

and gives more

because her suffering is thornless

and the waves go on forever

like mystic oceans in the rose

when she sends the light out

on a long sea journey at night

like a widow standing

at an expanding window

abandoned by the view

thinking of what she gave birth to.

New lamps for old.

Blue-white T Tauri stars

for dreaded black holes.

Intimately fresh wounds

she mends with cosmic scars.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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