THE LEAF IS ITS OWN MAP

The leaf is its own map

as the urgent light of the star to the west

of this lonely, dark, shadow-slashed road

is its own way home,

and the wind might blow where it will

and the radiance yearn in all directions

for a threshold as wide as the journey is long

so that everywhere their wandering

is the vagrant host of the home they’ve never left,

and I may well be like that,

but the way that takes me

is a different order of space

than the one you can be found and lost in.

The here of this place is forever now,

and the wind and the flowing stream

do not taste of the stars of the night before,

and when the roses and the orchids and the waterlilies burn,

and the sky catches flame

the blood releases its black horses,

and the heart cries out in its agony to no one at all

it’s not the weathervane

of a prophetic skull,

and every word

turns into a fish

looking for a lifeboat on the bottom,

and my thoughts are cast like nets

across the tides of my emotions

and the temple I loved in lieu of a goddess

turns out to be a shipwreck on the moon,

and I am no more the darling of my favourite delusions,

and if I catch anything

on the lure of a question

that presses through my flesh

like the silver hook of the moon,

I’m sure to throw it back dead.

PATRICK WHITE