If Compassion
If compassion is not
the fruit of your understanding
your tree is rootless and flawed
however beautiful the blossoms are.
And your eyes may be as lustrous
as polished stones
you've buffed like the moon on water
but there's nothing inside
and gold doesn't pour like dawn
from the dark ore of your suffering
when you cry.
If a child is shot in Gaza
and you don't bleed
for the evil seed in her head
as you would your own
then only the dead will sow your field
and you will gnaw the hard bread
of your own gravestone
like a book you should have read.
If compassion is not
the fruit of your understanding
however much is illuminated
by the rarity of your perception,
the lamp you go by
is still not ripe,
you're still a green apple
on the bough
in autumn.
The tongue is a shovel
and knowledge is soil
and you can use it
to dig a grave for your brother
or prepare a garden
as it was meant to do
and your words can flower
into fruit and bread
at the eastern doors of the dead
who will raise the sun up to their lips
and drink from it like a cup,
but if all your heart can do with blood
is jewel the eloquence of the blind
with lucid insights
then your siloes are nothing
but the empty thunder
of lightning without rain
and you will reap the sand like the scythe
of a crescent moon
that's never tasted grain.
And you may be a glutton,
you may stuff yourself day and night
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poem by Patrick White
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