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?
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 ... 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?
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 ... 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.