David Whyte's Poem

and Commentary, by yours truly

Poem
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you can know despair or see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying, "This is where I stand."

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

If you are prepared to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.
--------------------------------

okay, my wife read this aloud, and it gelled a bit for me.
here's my take on the parts I didn't get at first (fierce heat of living, falling toward..,consequence of love and bitter/sure defeat)

there is both one God and many, it's the same thing: God is everything. The same love permeates all. I belong. I have abandoned others, but not in a too horrible way, I would say, and in the same way, others have abandoned me. I don't consider myself a magnetic personality, exactly. No matter, I value my solitude. I have missed being in more social environments like schools or workplaces. I wonder if I will be "well" enough soon to return. I can both see despair in others and know it myself. I CAN deal with a world's harsh need to change me: for example, to submit (my pride is not all-consuming, although I'll admit it's close). Falling toward the center of my longing... I have a longing for a better world, but I know from my own psychological genesis, that the dark side is here to stay, so to speak. Creation entails destruction, for example. Zealotry for good entails hatred of the bad. I know how to melt into the fierce heat of living -say a wild sexual life- but I'd rather just work quietly on my blog, a companion to Sara. I'm supposed to live a calm and tranquil life, not the life of Batman or whatever, lol. The consequences of love are vulnerability....sure defeat would be death, I imagine. A broken heart can be cruelly sad.

The "bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat" refers to the fact that there will never be a perfect world, for either a utopian heavenly ideal of universal love or, conversely, a world of anarchy, without laws, where everyone enforces their own idea of justice (if these ideas even clash, actually, lol). Anyway, I'm right where I want to be, and I'll be defeated by time or tomorrow's headlines or some other disappointment, of course, in any case, and so it goes.

I'm not buying into this supposed fact that I have to embrace an unwanted passion of sure defeat as part of being in love. Love is sufficient. A dull, boring, everday, conversant, friendly, kindly, kind of love. "Passion" is the code word for Jesus on the cross, or people dying for a cause, or what truly makes people tick. I'm happy to know a little bit more each day, being a significant other, and entertaining the possibility that my simple pleasures might actually not have to ever end. I'm 38, I plan to become stronger and more fit, and maybe have (a kid/kids) in the not too distant future. That's good enough for me. Life has it's drama, comedy and tragedy alike, sometimes in unequal measure. I, too, am a god who believes in God. (I'll let you wonder what I mean by that :-)