THE WORLD IS ONLY AS BIG

THE WORLD IS ONLY AS BIG

 

The world is only as big

as the size of the life going on in me.

If I wanted to take the full measure of the sky

what could that be

compared to the lightyears it takes

to get from one side of my mind to the other?

And look how huge the darkness is

that can be cast by one star

like the negative of its shining.

And what road has anyone walked

that was ever longer than their shadow?

Eternity’s just another way of saying

you’ve run out of space for time.

I don’t think I’m going to live forever

but my life will go on without me

just as it always has.

I’ll get up in the morning

like the ghost of someone I can’t remember

and I’ll have a coffee and a cigarette

as I wait for the obscurity to clear

like steam on a bathroom mirror

to see if I can recognize

anything about me

that was true yesterday.

Will I feel as I do now like a leftover

from the night before

pushed to the side of the plate

as everything in the room

reviles me slightly

and gets back to the silence

they were engaged in

before I interrupted them so impolitely

I smeared their meditation

with my intrusive incoherence?

They all seem to be waiting

for someone to make an appearance

but it definitely isn’t me.

It’s beautiful outside

but when I look

I’m always looking at the beauty

of someone else’s bride

and I turn away like night from the orchard

as if I were always the best man

at the wedding of Adam and Eve.

Eden.

In clay-bound Sumer

from the word Edin

meaning the southern marshes

of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

whose mouths were always full of food

and the living was easy and good.

Same garden.

Same tree.

Same apple.

Same suggestive serpent.

But I’ve always understood

from the first bite

of self-knowledge

the baffled man in me

eats the apple to know things

about the lucid woman in me

who eats it to grow wings on a snake

to raise that up high

which has been cast down low.

Now all gods and dragons are estranged oxymorons

and Nicholas of Cusa’s Coincidence of the Contradictories

is the yin and yang

the lingam and yoni

of a grand biodynamic plan

to sow clarity in the heart of confusion

to see what kind of chaos we can make of it

that might randomly advance

the creative mischance of evolution

happening everywhere the same

to everyone all at once.

Though to think it has balance and purpose

is to build two retaining walls

in the corner of the one dunce.

It’s the kind of war

where you go to peace against the other

and there’s a commotion

in the heart of the stillness

that is distinctly human.

Something stirring

about the enduring effect

of love and compassion

when it happens without a cause

and the mirrors don’t look through the laws

of iron bars

like skies in captivity

deprived of stars in their solitude

or words to lighten the mood.

Of course it’s absurd.

Life’s only playing at being serious

and a childlike madness

a crazy wisdom

that isn’t imperiously innocent

of its own experience

is the only way to express

the lucid triviality of what’s sublime

about its creativity

like stars in the daytime

lost in the lightless depths

of an expansive mind

that’s come to the limit of things

like a Martian rover

by realizing

there’s no edge to go over.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sisters raise flowers against their brothers