LICKING THE BLOOD

Licking the blood off my claws

in a dark lair,

sharper than the dilated pupils

of an hypodermic snake,

I have answered for myself

like lightning answers the whispering rain.

Let the moon fall like an ax

on the napes of the distant hills,

or the constellations

that fall away eventually

like warped boards from the sky

rise delinquently.

I have transformed

the ox of understanding in my heart

into a bull that will no longer

be morally goaded

into grinding the corn of the villagers.

I wear their blood on my horn

like a red flag

and everywhere

their matadors lie wounded

among the blades and unpetalled plinths

of a shining that tastes

of an unprohecied eclipse.

The trouble with understanding

is that it gives birth to itself incommensurably

like a repeating decimal;

it breeds dilemmas that need to be understood.

Why replicate the matter

like some overworked gene

until you are nauseous with immortality

when one thrust of a horn, a fang, a claw,

the truth,

resolves the issue?

Civilization, morality, manners

are just scabbards,

however encrusted with jewels and philosophies

that sheath the sword of life

whose edges aren’t paginated like a book.

Sometimes there’s more mercy and clarity

in drawing the sword like a baton

than there is in a symphony of duelling scalpels.

Is it better to go deaf

when you’ve heard too much, blind

when you’ve seen enough?

Who blows out the flame to save their eyes

or cuts out their tongue as a retraction?

I am not the cornerstone

of a hospital for wounded delusions

nor the internal afflictions

that scar your afterlife

like cracks in the plaster of paradise.

And I can’t tell you who I am

because I don’t know.

Only a fool

would stop the river

to ask it if it flows.

How long has it been

since you’ve looked at your face

on the waters of a dream

and not seen the reflection of a scheme?

Haven’t you noticed those secrets

that won’t share your eyes with anyone else,

those things you’ve known since childhood

like the pets you buried in silence and lies

are wearing you for a disguise?

PATRICK WHITE