A Heart Broken Open

David Whyte "The Opening of Eyes"

From Songs for Coming Home. © Many Rivers Press, 1984.

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“The hope is to live without it and to have as little as possible. But all evidence is to the contrary of these child-like hopes; heartbreak is as inescapable and inevitable as breathing, a part and parcel of every path, asking for its due in every sincere course an individual takes. It may be that there is no real life without the raw revelation of heartbreak; no single path we can take within a life that will allow us to escape without having that imaginative organ we call the heart broken by what it holds and then has to let go.”