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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


THE REASON MOST PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY

THE REASON MOST PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY

 

The reason most people are unhappy

is that they love their misery.

They cling to it

like a voodoo doll of themselves

they’ve been poking pins in since childhood.

They derive their identity from it.

They wouldn’t know who they were without it.

They drive pins through its eyes in the mirror

to make things clear as rain

and then refusing to go along

with the flow of life

seek shelter in the pain

of never going anywhere.

They cast curses

on fate on God on life on love

on the impure selflessness of blue knowledge

but they’re spitting into the wind

and their curses come back on them

like chapter and verse

of an infernal bible

that doesn’t command them

to do anything but carry on as they are.

You can look up astonished at the stars

enraptured by a glimpse of the same mystery

that awes the gods themselves

into an unfamiliar silence

and lose the moment

like a butterfly on a chainsaw

as you hear the hiss and snarl of misery 

dying and whining beside you

like a snowflake on a furnace

about being down to its last cigarette

in front of all these firing squads

gathered like constellations

against the innocent flame

of a solitary match

that refuses to go out

without fixing the blame

on everything else that shines.

Misery sees a waterlily opening in a swamp

transforming all that decay

like enlightenment

into something brief and beautiful

like earth’s answer to the stars

and it’s the swamp it remembers

in all its lurid details:

the spider sucking the life

out of the dragonfly

caught in a radiant web

among the treacherous cattails.

Misery holds a grudge against life

for sustaining itself on food

it grows for itself

and breaks like loaves among the poor

to keep things going

whether you taste honey

or bitter ashes on your bread

or brunch with the dead

by giving up hunger altogether

as a protest against

the lavishness of nature

squandering good water on wine.

I remember a poet

from the non-existent good old days

who could cut your throat like a razor

with a sharp dark phrase

and the birds would stop singing

and his girlfriend in the corner

would shudder to think

she would be his next blood-sacrifice

if he were ever to discover

how innocent she really was.

He ended the way he began

according to his own cosmic laws

with nothing left to eclipse

agreeing with Sophocles

that never to have been born is best.

He may have gotten the world off his chest

when he shot himself through the heart

like the last fang of wisdom he had to impart

like a crescent of the moon

that would never be full

like a sickle without a harvest

that cut down everything in sight

just to spite the flowers

but he had to point the gun

at his heart

not his brain

to do it.

And that was that.

He stayed true to his pointlessness

as if that were the point

he had been trying to make all along.

And then the birds broke back into song.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


THE REASON MOST PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY

THE REASON MOST PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY

 

The reason most people are unhappy

is that they love their misery.

They cling to it

like a voodoo doll of themselves

they’ve been poking pins in since childhood.

They derive their identity from it.

They wouldn’t know who they were without it.

They drive pins through its eyes in the mirror

to make things clear as rain

and then refusing to go along

with the flow of life

seek shelter in the pain

of never going anywhere.

They cast curses

on fate on God on life on love

on the impure selflessness of blue knowledge

but they’re spitting into the wind

and their curses come back on them

like chapter and verse

of an infernal bible

that doesn’t command them

to do anything but carry on as they are.

You can look up astonished at the stars

enraptured by a glimpse of the same mystery

that awes the gods themselves

into an unfamiliar silence

and lose the moment

like a butterfly on a chainsaw

as you hear the hiss and snarl of misery 

dying and whining beside you

like a snowflake on a furnace

about being down to its last cigarette

in front of all these firing squads

gathered like constellations

against the innocent flame

of a solitary match

that refuses to go out

without fixing the blame

on everything else that shines.

Misery sees a waterlily opening in a swamp

transforming all that decay

like enlightenment

into something brief and beautiful

like earth’s answer to the stars

and it’s the swamp it remembers

in all its lurid details:

the spider sucking the life

out of the dragonfly

caught in a radiant web

among the treacherous cattails.

Misery holds a grudge against life

for sustaining itself on food

it grows for itself

and breaks like loaves among the poor

to keep things going

whether you taste honey

or bitter ashes on your bread

or brunch with the dead

by giving up hunger altogether

as a protest against

the lavishness of nature

squandering good water on wine.

I remember a poet

from the non-existent good old days

who could cut your throat like a razor

with a sharp dark phrase

and the birds would stop singing

and his girlfriend in the corner

would shudder to think

she would be his next blood-sacrifice

if he were ever to discover

how innocent she really was.

He ended the way he began

according to his own cosmic laws

with nothing left to eclipse

agreeing with Sophocles

that never to have been born is best.

He may have gotten the world off his chest

when he shot himself through the heart

like the last fang of wisdom he had to impart

like a crescent of the moon

that would never be full

like a sickle without a harvest

that cut down everything in sight

just to spite the flowers

but he had to point the gun

at his heart

not his brain

to do it.

And that was that.

He stayed true to his pointlessness

as if that were the point

he had been trying to make all along.

And then the birds broke back into song.

 

PATRICK WHITE