Everything is waiting for you, David Whyte

'Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone'

I know it’s only been a week since I sent you a post but as there is more need for poetry and art right now than ever, I won’t apologise. If you haven’t been under a rock, you will have seen the torch of dehumanisation, racism and xenophobia that has been burning since October 7, now starting to burn across the world. It is nothing new of course, but the latest race riots emerging across UK have been just another bubbling of what has been lurking under the surface.

We all know that racism is not a by-product but a key structural pillar of the colonial capitalist project. We are reaching its logical conclusion.

But as fear permeated my psyche over the last couple of days, another part of me is growing visible too - the part that refuses to be marginalised, one that refuses to categorise myself as a victim, one that sees loss everywhere but also what we might build together.

I came across a poem by David Whyte on the On Being podcast by Krista Tippet which is an excellent and invigorating listen, that I wanted to share with folks who might be grappling with fear and nihilism, but still harbouring some hope for what is possible.

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Everything is Waiting for You

Written and read 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

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The painting titled and made after this poem is now stretched, and is incidentally the largest work I’ve made ever - its expansiveness a reminder of the conversation about ways of living, we are in the midst of at the moment.

Everything is waiting for you | Ink on raw canvas | 140cm x 110cm

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Sana