THE SECRET OF YOUR BEAUTY

for the muse

The secret of your beauty told

would be to understand God.

To know you as you are

would be an eternal beginning.

And the pain that I have suffered

pursuing you through everything

though you were everywhere like space,

is the dark ecstasy

of following my own blood back

to your heart.

Late autumn now

and even the fires of the leaves

have conceded to the deeper dream

of the serpent that sleeps in the root,

having burnt their books.

I have grown old

trying to substantiate shadows,

wearing these tatters of light like skin.

And the solitude

is the holy apprentice of time,

but I have mastered

the excruciating discipline

of remaining true,

though I perished in the transformation,

to the eloquent folly

of loving you

like a tongueless bell

that no word has ever sounded

in the abyss of the silence.

To encounter you

is to long for life

like an empty boat

drifting toward a voice in the fog.

Infinite the times

I’ve said I do

and you wore the world for a wedding-dress,

and every poem I’ve ever written,

the lifting of one of your veils.

PATRICK WHITE