Poem for the Day

Lately I have been very remiss about blogging. I've been been distracted by the definitive "Scoliosis Scandal" ebook I'm hoping to finish one of these years, as well as by personal situations and crises -- in particular, one shocking interpersonal offensive so transgressive, so horrifying, that I have not begun to be able to process it; it has brought many decades of profound love and caring, companionable dialogue and mutual respect, into question. All I can do is let it be for now. No matter how hard we may have worked on gratitude and forgiveness, we live in a world where others are never wholly knowable, where they can strike out in inexplicable ways -- can even, without warning, spew foul rage and hatred almost casually, like an old-time guy momentarily interrupting a sidewalk conversation  to aim a gigantic black wad of disgustingly chewed, half-masticated, saliva-slick tobacco into the nearest spittoon.  If you happen to be the individual mistaken for that spittoon, you may be left  dumbstruck, reeling -- wounded, finally, into a kind of icy, shell-shocked paralysis . . . .

But enough of that subject.The Revisionary Woman strives always toward inner hope and healing, regardless of inevitable encounters with pain, uncertainty, horror, grief.; despite -- because of? -- those nights we find ourselves wrestling an unknown adversary to the point of exhaustion. (By the way, who said, "Hell is other people"?) (And what is that oft-quoted line from Hemingway, exactly? -- "Life breaks everyone; but some of us become strong at the broken places" -- I think that's close, anyway.)

For today, I just want to quote and preserve a poem I've saved for so long that it's becoming almost unreadably dog-eared in places. I snipped it from a magazine several years ago and am sorry to have no further information, except that the poet is David Whyte, and the poem is apparently from a longer work called "Sweet Darkness" -- a fitting title indeed for times such as these. I still do not understand it completely. The third stanza in particular remains somewhat obscure to me. But the poem as a whole feels wise and true. It speaks to me deep-down, stirs up a kind of tender, tentative consolation.  Perhaps it will touch you too.

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

                    David Whyte, from "Sweet Darkness"