WHITE IS WHITE
(Selections) (1972)

 

father time and mother earth

embraced

and

white was born

 

 

 

 

white is also forever

 

 

 

 

paint the wind white

 

 

 

 

moments of whiteness

are

moments of silence

are

moments without time

 

 

 

white is pregnant with colour

as

silence is pregnant with sound

what is white if not silent music

each one of us hears in his heart

 

 

 

 

white is the sound of a lost poem

echoing through the corridors of time

 

 

 

 

the white wind of a musical tear

echoes the grey lament of a silent fountain

 

 

 

 

long shadows of silence

cast by a frozen sun

mark time in white eternity

 

 

 

white is the rainbow of light

 

 

 

 

white is the colour of fairy tales

 

 

 

white is the wrath of the blue sea

 

 

 

if white passed away

how could the other colours mourn it

 

 

 

 

under a white sun

floats a white cloud

over a white sea

white might yet fall invisibly out of time

 

 

 

 

white is a meditation 

of 

an image in time without time

 

 

 

cemeteries of death-infested corpses

send out pulsations of white mortality

 

 

 

 

turn white

keep getting whiter

till the white you have attained

is so white

that you become

invisible

 

 

 

 

when i die

paint me white

if i do not turn that way

anyway

 

 

 

 

work on your life until it becomes a work of art

work on your art until it becomes your life

 

 

 

 

i find white in spring

in the blossoming petal of

a fragrant flower

 

 

 

i find white in summer

in the burning ecstasy of

a sunwashed wall

 

 

 

i find white in autumn

in the swaying branch of

a leafless tree

 

 

 

i find white in winter

in the freezing stillness of

a fallen snow

 

 

 

i do not remember being born

which must have been the most important event of my life

i hope at least to remember my death

having lost whiteness in the former

i hope to discover it in the latter

 

 

 

if i have found you through white in white

if i have found you through white in silence

if i have found you through silence in white

if i have found you through silence in silence

then i shall know you

for a time longer than time


Original publication: "White is White", M.R.S.M. Ltd (1972)