ALL DAY THE SUN

All day the sun ripens the grape;

all night the wine ripens the cup,

a carrying forth into a carrying forth

of fruit into fruit, sun to grape,

grape to cup, cup to mouth,

life into death, you into me,

and everything drunk with transformation,

and everything crazed with flame and fury

as if the lips of the night were bleeding

as if there were eyes on the limbs of trees

that were nudged by the wind

to let go of their chandeliers

and the fire wanted a creekbed of its own

that could weep its way to the sea

and the wind shook the window

it wanted to be. And there are shoes

that were once the barges of men,

and roads that mistook themselves

for a journey, and hearts in the grass,

hardly distinguishable from other boundary stones

that once were blazing meteors,

gashes of demonic iron that could change the earth

in the reflex of their igneous agony,

and faces in the orchards

that admired them for their blossoming,

now, all, utterly changed, transformed,

like the reasons for water or God.

And night after night it goes on like this,

swans in the ashes of burnt guitars,

and women with hysterectomies,

and a pearl on the tongue of the eloquent oysters,

and fire hydrants coming home from war

like amputees, and the lovers

behind the auroral curtains over the hills,

clouds in an hourglass

with lifeboats of sand for mouths,

and floral yokes of bright farewells

on the spinal wharves of their longing.

The sea became waves

and the waves became snakes

and the snakes washed up on the tide

scaled the ladder into feathers

and flew. One can become two, but zero

never empowers anything to change

except to be more of itself,

that’s why it’s cool to be nothing

and enlarge without limit

the infinities in the grain

of a human heart into a cosmic silo..

There’s enough space

in the tiny blood-drum of a shrew

for an eternity of zeroes to shine through;

and that’s what the stars are,

nothing shining down on nothing

so that everything can exist,

me voiding myself like the silence

I feel like a child before you,

so I can hear you

making nothing of yourself to see

who I might be

in the empty mirror without you,

because there are lamps

that feed on the darkness

shadows brighter than noon,

that make the darkness darker

so we can see the moon.

PATRICK WHITE