Everything is Waiting for You
by David Whyte

After Derek Mahon

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

I woke up this morning , ready to come here and pound
my FAQ and tell you my latest idea –
About how to solve a problem.

The boys – already working – the machines humming – stopping – starting again,
the gentle clink of scissors and clippers being picked up
and put down again, the quiet clucking of my production brood.

Rafa busy – a twist of cloth becoming…under his fingers and needle –
the night’s ideas spill out of me like a waterfall as he looks on helplessly –
escríbemelo….

José Luis Perales chirping quietly as the humming, the thrumming starts and stops again.

Gmail > The New York Times >
What do you miss when you put on noise-canceling headphones?
Why do I care? I have problems to solve.

I click the link anyway.
Tiny sounds, tiny stories — my mind nods.
Then she mentions David Whyte.
The reporter quotes: “As if life / were a progressive and cunning crime.”

Cunning.

Before the thought even settles, Google has the poem on my screen.
I read it.

The World Stops.

I print the page and my eyes look to the title again.

David Whyte — in his poem before it begins — the line:

After Derek Mahon

I’m on the page before the thought even settles:

After The Titanic
by Derek Mahon

They said I got away in a boat
And humbled me at the inquiry. I tell you
I sank as far that night as any
Hero. As I sat shivering on the dark water
I turned to ice to hear my costly
Life go thundering down in a pandemonium of
Prams, pianos, sideboards, winches,
Boilers bursting and shredded ragtime. Now I hide
In a lonely house behind the sea
Where the tide leaves broken toys and hatboxes
Silently at my door. The showers of
April, flowers of May mean nothing to me, nor the
Late light of June, when my gardener
Describes to strangers how the old man stays in bed
On seaward mornings after nights of
Wind, takes his cocaine and will see no one. Then it is
I drown again with all those dim
Lost faces I never understood, my poor soul
Screams out in the starlight, heart
Breaks loose and rolls down like a stone.
Include me in your lamentations.

Already defenseless, the left hook lands.

how like the latter am I
hidden in the valley
when was my sinking?
what iceberg did I strike
so many years ago?

Poems are the quiet rustling of man
after a lifetime I finally understand
Mary Oliver paved the way
when you let words sink in
they settle in the loam
and become part of the mycelial compost

and maybe — David Whyte and Mary Oliver
bookending me and Mahon
can exert enough momentum
to expel the great splinter
and finally clean the wound

Footnotes

¹ David Whyte, Everything Is Waiting for You.
First published in Everything Is Waiting for You, Many Rivers Press (2003).
© David Whyte / Many Rivers Press.

² Derek Mahon, After the Titanic.
First published in The Snow Party, Oxford University Press (1975).
© Derek Mahon / The Gallery Press & Wake Forest University Press.