The next time you sit with a blank sheet of paper in front of you, about to write a poem, or an insightful mathematical equation that describes the universe, or your new novel, or your thoughts about life, remember this ...
THE PAGE AS A METAPHOR
Why should these words bespoil the virgin white
Why force form on formless blank symmetry
Why mind mind and contents
Spilled over innocence
Forced through the point
Penned onto pure plainness
Killing it by staining it with man
Once there was beauty
A mirror of white
Reflecting nothing but itself
Nothing but perfection
Once there was harmony
And a mirror of oneness
In a window of white
But man must always intrude
And straining to stain the white platter
With half-forced effusion of mental matter
He makes a meal of his own mentality
For with the contents spilled
And the beauty killed
He has proved his own reality
Why force form on formless blank symmetry
Why mind mind and contents
Spilled over innocence
Forced through the point
Penned onto pure plainness
Killing it by staining it with man
Once there was beauty
A mirror of white
Reflecting nothing but itself
Nothing but perfection
Once there was harmony
And a mirror of oneness
In a window of white
But man must always intrude
And straining to stain the white platter
With half-forced effusion of mental matter
He makes a meal of his own mentality
For with the contents spilled
And the beauty killed
He has proved his own reality
A poem by Alan John Hardman, written at age 17 or 18, in Southend, Essex, England.