Amongst Evil Who Lied Dearest Mother
FAREWELL LETTER
by David Whyte
"She wrote me a letter
after her death
and I remember
a kind of happy light
falling on the envelope
as I sat by the rose tree
on her old bench
at the back door,
so surprised
by its arrival
wondering what
she would say,
looking up before
I could open it
and laughing to myself
in silent expectation.
Dear son,
it is time
for me
to leave you.
I am afraid
that the words
you are used
to hearing
are no longer
mine to give,
they are gone
and mingled
back in the world
where it is no longer
in my power
to be their first
original author
not their last
loving bearer.
You can hear
motherly
words of affection now
only from your own mouth
and only
when you speak them
to those
who stand
motherless
before you.
As for me
I must forsake
adulthood
and be bound gladly
to a new childhood.
You must understand
this apprenticeship
demands of me
an elemental innocence
from everything
I ever held in my hands.
I know your generous soul
is well able to let me go
you will in the end
be happy to know
my God was true
and I find myself
after loving you all so long,
in the wide,
infinite mercy
of being mothered myself.
P.S. All your intuitions were true.
FAREWELL LETTER
David Whyte
by David Whyte
"She wrote me a letter
after her death
and I remember
a kind of happy light
falling on the envelope
as I sat by the rose tree
on her old bench
at the back door,
so surprised
by its arrival
wondering what
she would say,
looking up before
I could open it
and laughing to myself
in silent expectation.
Dear son,
it is time
for me
to leave you.
I am afraid
that the words
you are used
to hearing
are no longer
mine to give,
they are gone
and mingled
back in the world
where it is no longer
in my power
to be their first
original author
not their last
loving bearer.
You can hear
motherly
words of affection now
only from your own mouth
and only
when you speak them
to those
who stand
motherless
before you.
As for me
I must forsake
adulthood
and be bound gladly
to a new childhood.
You must understand
this apprenticeship
demands of me
an elemental innocence
from everything
I ever held in my hands.
I know your generous soul
is well able to let me go
you will in the end
be happy to know
my God was true
and I find myself
after loving you all so long,
in the wide,
infinite mercy
of being mothered myself.
P.S. All your intuitions were true.
FAREWELL LETTER
by David Whyte
in River Flow
New & Selected Poems
Many Rivers Press © David Whyte
"It is the anniversary my mother's passing. A mother remains a mother even after they have passed away, and in many ways the conversation between mother and son, mother and daughter, mother and child, if we allow it, can deepen, intensify and lead to new forms of love, long after their going.
in River Flow
New & Selected Poems
Many Rivers Press © David Whyte
"It is the anniversary my mother's passing. A mother remains a mother even after they have passed away, and in many ways the conversation between mother and son, mother and daughter, mother and child, if we allow it, can deepen, intensify and lead to new forms of love, long after their going.
My mother had lost her own mother at just thirteen years old, and I had the strongest intuition just after she had passed, that she was returning to a childhood that had ended far too soon in the Ireland of her youth.
To acknowledge a mother, but also to let her go into her own personhood, independent of that the fact that she brought us into this world, may be one of the more difficult steps in the deepening maturity of that still indissoluble bond."
David Whyte
" My Brother, he run, My Father, he knows,
My Self, I Grow and choose to follow"
APM 100879
