Latest quotes | Random quotes | Vote! | Latest comments | Submit quote

Why Do You Cast Me In The Worst Light

Why do you cast me in the worst light possible
when you know I treat you like the navel of the world,
the Pleiades, the ghost of a mountain
that was once my heart? Why do you lie to me
when you know there are doors beyond the truth
I’ve already walked through
like an initiation into a darkness
that will adorn your breath with stars?
Nothing mundane, nothing extraordinary
and yet I find myself here with you at sixty-three
having run out of mirrors and windows to read,
believing there are no more eyes
like wells in a desert to drink from, no further
delirium of the spirit that won’t prove me a clown
if I were to believe in it at my age
when every hour is either a funeral, a storm, or a crisis.
And yet how much I do want to believe,
how much I long to discover
rain on the moon, mystical fireflies
in the punk and tinder of the cattails,
sacred keychains on the ground at my feet,
a phoenix in the ashes of the blue guitar. At times
everything is ecclesiastically vain, contaminated
by the insight, bad meat in the mindstream,
that everything I ever cherished and tried to emulate
is nothing more than the shabby dream,
the random action of expiring illusions
indifferent to their embodiment in blood or blessing,
child, martyr, suicide or saint,
prick, pariah, or prophet, all
without exception, true to the vision that is them,
even the madman convinced of his private verities
as the apple-tree is convinced of its leaves
and the sun espouses the flower. Is it not absurdly vain,
knowing all things are vain
to feel abandoned by the assurance,
so blithely and brightly assumed when young
among the junkyards and the orchards
that life has not been endured and transcended in vain,
that the tender transience of the fire, and the shadows that it cast,
the myriad transformations, the chrysalis and the coffin,
and all the ore of ardour refined
by the pursuit of an igneous excellence, the grace
of a virtue slowly attained like the taming of a wild gazelle,
or a chair well-made by a man
with the soul of a tree, were not without the grandeur
of a hidden harmony more crucial than the obvious,
no life lived that was lived to no purpose?
I can give myself like a seed to the wind, I can
sit down at a table of elements with the atoms

[...] Read more

poem by Report problemRelated quotes
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Share
 
 
This text contains a mistake
This text is duplicate
The author of this text is another person
Another problem

More info, if necessary

Your name

Your e-mail

Search


Recent searches | Top searches