July 8, 2012
Self Portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.


— David Whyte

11:36pm
(Notes: 14)
  
Filed under: David Whyte poetry 
August 2, 2011

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.


David Whyte, All the true vows

7:26pm
(Notes: 11)
  
Filed under: David Whyte poetry 
February 15, 2010

Photobucket
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.


~ David Whyte








9:27am
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: David Whyte poetry 
January 24, 2010

The Opening of Eyes


That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.


— David Whyte

3:46pm
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: David Whyte poetry