GUILTY OF DUST

up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time

the voice in my head said

LOVE IS THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

*

then I saw the parade of my loves

those PERFORMERS comics actors singers

forgetful of my very self so often I
desired to die to myself to live in them

then my PARENTS my FRIENDS the drained
SPECTRES once filled with my baffled infatuations

love and guilt and fury and
sweetness for whom

nail spirit yearning to the earth

*

then the voice in my head said

WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE

OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS
REVOLT AGAINST IT

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

1984

© 1987 Frank Bidart

 

 

It will be difficult to persuade me that the story of THE PRODIGAL SON is not the legend of one who did not want to be loved. When he was a child, everybody in the house loved him. He grew up knowing nothing else, and as a child he became accustomed to their tenderness.



But as a growing boy he sought to lay aside these habits. He could not put it into words, but when he wandered about outside the whole day and did not even want to take the dogs with him, it was because they too loved him; because he could read in their eyes obedience, expectancy, participation and solicitude; because even in their presence he could do nothing without pleasing or giving pain. But what he then desired was that inner indifference of spirit, which sometimes, of an early morning in the fields, seized him so unalloyed that he began to run, that he might have neither time nor breath to be more than a tran­sient moment in which the morning becomes conscious of itself.



The secret of that life of his which never yet had been, spread out before him. Involuntarily he forsook the footpath and ran on across the fields, with arms outstretched as if by that breadth of reach he could make himself master of several directions at once. And then he would throw himself down behind some hedge, and no one cared what became of him. He peeled a willow-branch to make himself a flute, flung a stone at some little wild animal, leaned forward to make a beetle turn around: in all this there was no hint of fate, and the heavens passed over him as over the world of nature. At last came afternoon with all its suggestions. He was a buccaneer on the island of Tortuga, but he was not obliged to be that; he besieged Campêche or took Vera Cruz by storm; he could be a whole army, or a general on horseback, or a ship on the ocean, accord­ing to his humour. But if it entered his head to kneel, then swiftly he became Deodatus of Gozon, and slew the dragon, and, hot with vexation, learned that this was the heroism of pride, not of obedience; for he spared himself nothing that was part of the game. But, however numerous his imaginary adventures might be, there was always time in between to be only a bird, if uncertain what kind. Only then came the return home.



Heavens, how much there was then to cast off and forget! For it was necessary to forget thoroughly; otherwise you betrayed yourself when they insisted on knowing. However you lingered and looked about, the gable of the house always appeared at last. The first window in the upper row kept its eye on you; someone might be standing there. The dogs, who had been waiting with growing eagerness all day, rushed at you through the bushes, and drove you back into the person they believed you to be. And the house did the rest. Once you entered into its full odor, most things were already decided. Details might still be changed, but in the main you were the person for whom they took you there; the person for whom, out of his brief past and their own desires, they had long fashioned a life, the common life, which lay day and night under the influence of their love, between their hope and their suspicion, before their praise or their blame.



Useless for such a person to go upstairs with in­describable precaution. They will all be in the sitting-room, and if the door merely opens they will look in his direction. He remains in the dark; he will await their questioning. But then the worst happens. They take him by the hand and draw him towards the table; and all of them, as many as are present, gather inquisitively before the lamp. They have the best of it; they keep in the shadow, while on him alone falls, with the light, all the shame of having a face.



Shall he stay and pretend to live the sort of life they ascribe to him, and grow to resemble them in his whole appearance? Shall he divide himself between the delicate sincerity of his will and the gross deceit that spoils it even for him? Shall he give up the at­tempt to become something which might hurt those of his family whose spirits are but feeble?



No, he will go away. When, for example, they are all busy setting out on his birthday table those badly chosen gifts meant, once again, to compensate for everything. Go away for ever. Not until long after­wards is he to realize how firmly he had then resolved never to love, in order not to put anyone in the terrible position of being loved. Years later he remembers this, and, like other projects, this too became impossible. For he had loved and loved again in his solitude, each time with wasteful expenditure of his whole nature and with unspeakable fear for the liberty of the other. Slowly he learned to penetrate the beloved object with the rays of his passion, instead of consuming it in them. And he was spoiled by the fascination of recog­nizing through the ever more transparent form of his beloved, the distances opened to his desire for unending possession.



How he would weep for whole nights with the longing to be himself shot through with such rays! But a woman loved, who yields, is still far from being a woman who loves. 0 nights without consolation, when his overflowing gifts came back to him piece-meal, and heavy with transience! How often he thought then of the troubadours who feared nothing more than to be granted what they asked! He gave all his possessions, inherited and acquired, not to have this experience. He wounded women with his gross payments, fearing from day to day lest they try to respond to his love. For he no longer had the hope of meeting the lover who should penetrate him utterly.



Even at the time when poverty terrified him every day with new hardships, when his head was the darling of misery and utterly worn bare, when ulcers opened all over his body like auxiliary eyes against the black­ness of his tribulation, when he shuddered at the offal to which men had abandoned him because he was of the same nature with it; still even then, when he re­flected, his greatest terror was lest anyone should re­spond to him. What were all these afflictions compared to the intense sadness of those embraces in which all was lost? Did one not wake with the feeling that no future remained? Did one not go about void of sig­nificance, without a right to danger? Had not one had to promise a hundred times not to die? Perhaps it was the stubbornness of this bitter memory, which came and came again and always kept itself a place, that enabled his life to endure amidst the filth. Finally he was found again. And not till then, not till the years of his shepherd's life, was his crowded past appeased.



Who shall describe what befell him then? What poet has the persuasive gift to reconcile the length of the days he now lived through with the brevity of life? What art is great enough to evoke simultaneously his thin, cloaked figure and the whole high spaciousness of his gigantic nights?



That was the time which began with his feeling himself a part of the universe and anonymous, like a lingering convalescent. He did not love, unless it were that he loved to live. The lowly affection of his sheep did not weigh upon him; like light falling through clouds it dispersed itself about him and gleamed softly on the meadows. In the innocent track of their hunger he strode silently across the pastures of the world. Strangers saw him on the Acropolis; and perhaps he was for a long time one of the shepherds in Les Baux, and saw the petrified age outlast that lofty race which, despite all its acquisition of sevens and threes, could not master the sixteen rays of its star. Or should I imagine him at Orange, leaning on the rustic trium­phal arch? Should I see him in the spirit-haunted shade of Aliscamps as, among graves that stand open like the graves of those who have risen from the dead, his eyes pursue a dragon-fly?



It matters little, I see more than himself: I see his being which then began the long way of love to God - that silent, aimless labour. For he who had wanted to hold himself back forever was once more dominated by his heart's increasing inability to be other than it was. And this time he hoped for a re­sponse. His whole nature, grown prescient and un­erring in the long solitude, assured him that He of whom he now thought, knew how to love with a pene­trating, radiant love. But while he longed to be loved at last so masterfully, his senses, accustomed to far distances, grasped the extreme remoteness of God. Nights came when he thought of flinging himself at Him through space; hours full of discovery, when he felt himself strong enough to plunge back to the earth and snatch it up on the stormy flood of his heart. He was like one who hears a noble language and fever­ishly undertakes to write in it. He had still to experi­ence the dismay of discovering how difficult this lan­guage was. He was unwilling to believe at first that a long life might pass in learning to form the first short phrases of senseless exercises. He flung himself into this study like a runner in a race; but the density of what he had to master made him slacken his pace. Nothing more humiliating could be imagined than this apprenticeship. He had found the philosopher's stone, and now he was compelled ceaselessly to trans­mute the swiftly made gold of his happiness back again into the gross lead of patience. He who had come to be at home in universal space crawled like a worm in tortuous passages without outlet or direction. Now that he learned to love through so much labour and sorrow, it was shown him how negligible and unworthy all the love had been which he thought he had accom­plished; how nothing could have come of it, since he had not begun to work at it and make it real.



During those years great changes took place in him. He almost forgot God in the hard task of draw­ing near Him, and all that he hoped perhaps to obtain from Him was ‘sa patience de supporter une âme’. Long ago he had detached himself from the accidents of fate to which men cling, but now even whatever of pleasure and pain were necessary lost their spicy after­taste and became pure and nourishing to him. From the roots of his being there sprang the sturdy, ever­green plant of a fertile joy. He was wholly engrossed in learning to handle what constituted his inner life; he wanted to omit nothing, for he doubted not that his love dwelt and grew in all this. Indeed, his inward serenity went so far that he resolved to overtake the most important of those things which he had hitherto been unable to accomplish, the things he had simply allowed to slip past while he waited. Above all he thought of his childhood, which, the calmer his re­flection, seemed to him more and more to have been unfulfilled; all its memories had about them the vagueness of premonitions, and that they were reckoned as past, made them almost part of the future. And to take all this once more, and this time in reality, upon himself - this was the reason he, estranged, turned home. We know not whether he remained; we only know that he returned.



Those who have told the story try at this point to remind us of the house as it looked then; for there only a short time has passed, a period easily reckoned; everyone in the house can say how long. The dogs have grown old, but they are still alive. It is said that one of them howled. The whole day's work is inter­rupted. Faces appear at the windows, faces that have aged and faces that have grown up, touchingly re­sembling one another. And in one quite old face, gone suddenly pale, recognition flashes. Recognition? Really only recognition? - Forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? - Love! My God, love!



But he, the person recognized, was so preoccupied that he had not been thinking of love, whether it might still exist. It is easy to understand how, of all that happened then, only this has been transmitted to us: his gesture, an unprecedented gesture that had never before been seen - the gesture of supplication, with which he threw himself at their feet, imploring them not to love him. Terrified and uncertain, they lifted him up. They interpreted his outburst in their own fashion, forgiving him. It must have been an in­describable relief to him that they all misunderstood him despite the desperate evidence of his attitude. Probably he was able to remain. For he recognized more clearly from day to day that the love of which they were so vain, and to which they secretly encour­aged one another, did not concern him. He almost had to smile at their endeavors, and it was evident how little they could be thinking about him.

What did they know of him? He was now ter­ribly difficult to love, and he felt that One alone was capable of loving him. But He was not yet willing.

 

 

-Rainer Marie Rilke

 

 

 

 

sige na muna. babay 

acquired from:
1217713

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1.) I have a short-circuit in my heart

2.) I enjoy dunkin donut's iced coffee while reading in starbucks

3.) I am a munster.

4.) I can't read good (recently).

5.) I need reasons. and i believe people shouldn't need too much reason.

6.) I don't know

7.) I too feel tired. Tired as a - as a rock? tired as a beast? tired as a priest? a whore? tired as a vampire? tired as a hand? as a heart? tired as a man? a life? (if this list of similes persist, i must not be that tired)

Tagging: im not really sure what tagging is