I WISH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WERE AS MAD AS YOU ARE

I WISH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WERE AS MAD AS YOU ARE

I wish everyone in the world were as mad as you are.

I wish everyone in the world talked the same nonsense you do

and meant as much.

Stop crying.

I wish everyone in the world were as good as you are

and didn’t lie to anyone else

other than themselves

about what the truth is.

You shape chaos to your mind

like light to space

to make a habitable planet you can live on

and if it isn’t round sometimes

and O doesn’t always cast the same shadow

that the others mimic with theirs

I wish everyone could put on your kind of airs

and be as good to life as the kind of atmosphere you are.

Come on now.

Here.

Dry your tears with this.

All those constellations you made up

out of the stars in your eyes

are your own private myths and mandalas

and you’re free to change them as you will

and I wish everyone made as much

of the light they were given to go by

as you have.

I’m too much of a thorn

to paint the delicate iridescent watercolours

I see smeared on your tender bubbles

like original pictures of the universe

from a thousand spaced-out Hubbles

but I wish everyone in the world

had your kind of genius for vulnerability.

You hold up a single feather of light

like a candle among stars

like a green leaf in the middle of winter

and the world that is inured to three dimensions

for infinitely tedious reasons

would rather put its eyes out

and gape like blackholes

than see as you do

that there are countless seasons to the soul

that burn like a phoenix

and there’s nowhere you can point to in the darkness

that isn’t an equinox of love and understanding

when the sun shines at midnight

and spring harvests what the autumn sows.

Having a deep cosmic insight

like a stranger beyond lucidity

into the windows of the houses of your own zodiac

might make you look like a maniac to the neighbours

who keep watch in their asylum

against any kind of freedom

that might release them from their lighthouse

like a geni from a lamp

that doesn’t conform to anyone’s wishs but her own

but I wish everyone had the courage

you have not to be them.

Life isn’t fair or unfair.

Life isn’t kind or cruel.

It isn’t half-Buddha and half-fool.

Neither impersonal

nor sentimental

life isn’t a kind of obedience

to its own rules

as if it were bound like God to keep its word.

Or what?

Who else is there to answer to?

All the taboos want to be thresholds

and all the thresholds

want to run away from home.

Could be a curse.

Could be a blessing.

Could be just more idle words.

But you’re not like that.

You’re not a fountain mouth

that mistakes alphabets for birds

and holds them to the letter of the law

in a world full of music.

It’s enlightenment to sing to a window.

It’s ignorance to sing to a mirror.

But you don’t sing to either

and your song is clear as running water

all the way down the mountain.

The picture-music

of your eyes and your ears

can already hear the ocean from here

that gathers to receive the flowing

like the heart receives blood

like the mind receives your thoughts.

Look out at the world.

You’re the host.

Look inward.

You’re the guest.

You can break bread with the dead

without being a ghost.

You can drink wine with the living

and it’s the wine that gets high on you

flowing into a seabed of shadows on the moon

that hasn’t touched a drop for years.

Don’t believe what the cynics say about innocence.

They have the sensibilities of blackflies

trying to draw blood from the Mona Lisa.

Don’t grieve if you’re a butterfly

that can’t follow the flightplans of the maggots.

There’s only a slight difference in wingspan

between a waterbird and a phoenix

but it would take lightyears

to measure a single feather of yours.

There’s no cult of the rose

that insists it fall upon its own thorns first

or the moon draw first blood

on the blades of its own crescents.

You don’t have to scar

your own deathmask with experience

just to prove you knew

how to eat the pain and bleed.

You don’t have to wear your face in public

as if it were something you kept up your sleeve.

Dice might be the foundation-stones of the lost

but that doesn’t mean

you have to go pearl-diving

for the moon in quicksand

or change your song like a jukebox

playing the slots

when you’re a mermaid on the rocks.

I wish everyone had the same chance

to risk it all as you do

and win back their lives

like eleven come of seven

insteading of seeing everything

as if they were jinxed by inasuspicious birds

turning the wrong way on a prayer-wheel

that keeps coming up snake-eyes

with every roll of their skulls.

You can’t heal the luck

of a wounded Nazi

by turning his swastika the other way.

You can’t teach snakes to bite other people.

And you don’t know enough

if there’s anything left to say or understand

and even then there’s a silence

that still longs to be heard

like a humming bird sipping honey from your ears

or deep in a telescopic wishing well of stars

burning in a dream of mirrors

they walk across

like fire on the water

or the distant blue notes

of the hidden nightbird

that echoes your tears

as if it were crying out in the darkness

from the safety of a secret place

for the same reasons you are.

As if it were trying to befriend its own sorrow

and weep for tomorrow as you do

for all the things of the past

it won’t even know it’s missing.

I wish everyone in the world

could live the future as you do

as something that is already happening now.

Even when you’re crying

because you don’t think you’re brave enough

not to.

You’re not a lame princess

that anyone needs to rescue.

You’re a dragon bringing rain.

And if the snakepit hisses at you

like a social structure

and calls you insane sometimes

because you have wings

and they still hug the earth

all tied up in knots

taking their poisons out on each other

to keep from feeling anything

it’s just their way of defining sanity

by the standards of the numbest.

It’s not you that’s crazy.

It’s not you that’s the dumbest.

I wish everyone in the world

were as warm-blooded and wise as you are.

When the serpent fire at the base of your spine

has passed through the doors

of all your chakras like vertebrae

and you’re already a circumpolar constellation j

just a little off true north

shining like Draco

why worry if you’re no good

at the game of snakes and ladders

they play like politics and religion back here on earth

to see who gets to be the pillar

and who the quicksand.

You understand way more than that.

I can tell by the fire in your eyes

that you’re a phoenix among stars

and you’ve transcended the eagles and the houseflies

that can’t even begin to imagine

the kind of heights you can reach to

or the depth of the view below you

when you’re riding your own thermals

like beautiful helices in the mindstream

for the sheer joy of being only you.

Even now.

These tears

that run all the way down to your lips

as if water had fingertips

what are they

but the way you cry for things

that everyone else didn’t?

I wish everyone in the world could be like you.

I wish you could teach us all

to stop living a spiritual lie

on the deathbed of an earthly truth

as if that were the only way

to foolproof ourselves

against reality

like a stranger looking through our windows at night

who doesn’t recognize herself in us

because most of us aren’t as brave and free as you are

to leave the door ajar

and let whatever wants to come in

come in.

Some track in mud.

Some.

Stars.

And the mud flowers in light.

And the stars bloom in fire.

And one looks up

and the other looks down

on each other’s likeness

reflected in the other

as if they were engendered by the same being.

Sight is a kind of love

and I wish everyone in the world

were inspired by the mystic dimensions

and intimate clarity of your kind of seeing

that even through these tears

that I’m not having much luck in wiping away

can comprehend a world

that’s more wonderful than it thinks it is.

PATRICK WHITE