AN ANT

An ant carrying the last bell of a flower,

the heavy weight of knowing how it ends,

the autumn left to clean up after the party,

I have nothing to say to the crows in daylight,

sitting a bough above me like quotation marks,

the heart afraid of its own farewells

as the geese stream across the sky like a shoelace,

and I am more alone in the world than space

as time shows me passage after passage

of wounded poppies bleeding like a hooker’s lipstick.

I’m tired of pushing the sail of my life

like a solar wind to the edges

of the knowable and over

into the unintelligible abyss

of a dictionary compiled for the dead.

And the stars are beginning to look like nails

in a large coffin without a rudder

that sank in drydock,

and stone by stone the cemeteries chatter about life

as they did among shadows, hoping and guessing

the pious vehemence of their chiselled certainties

doesn’t drop a dime

on the number of urges they’ve had

to fuck a teen-age girl into oblivion.

And there are clarities quick enough

to open the lovers like letters that never came,

and mental corals

that will rip the hull out of the moon,

and hives of venom and honey

that hang like lanterns and ambivalent kisses

above the tongue that’s fool enough to taste them,

and a night so dark ahead

only the most star-struck understudies

of last year’s constellations

are eager enough to shine.

I wish I didn’t know,

I wish I didn’t insist on seeing

and my blood didn’t set out looking for me

like a dove with a message

to assassinate anyone who hides.

PATRICK WHITE