ESTRANGED IN MY NORMALCY

Estranged in my normalcy

am I mocking myself by living this way,

nothing to achieve,

everything to explore?

And it can be spiritual quicksand at times

to realize that no one experiences the seeing

because the seeing is us,

and lonely and cold and older than weather,

well beyond eyes.

And there’s a different kind of light

that illuminates the stillness with its dark clarity

and expands the frequencies of awareness

throughout its perfect creation

with a silence more horrific than love

and sometimes I think

I have annulled my being in that.

And the leaves fall

and I wonder about everything

and listen to the mystery and the sorrow

in the squalls of the Canada geese overhead at night.

It’s not so important

that they mean anything anymore,

the beads of the rosaries they were broken and scattered;

the muezzin on the minara merely the wind

that blows incessantly, but still,

they’re as sacred as they ever were

and I am awed like a well listening to the stars

by their passage

and the beauty and brevity of mine,

inflections of the same unknown endeavour

by the indiscernible doer

who may or may not be us.

Jupiter in Sagittarius

and in two days

the ecliptic will intersect

the celestial equator at the equinoctial colure

and it’s autumn again

and it’s hard to be cynical and incisive in the afterglow

of things that don’t last

when you’re one of them.

I miss every woman I’ve ever loved.

I wish I’d been kinder to my dead friends.

Where have my children gone?

Did I give it my all, and my all

amount to nothing?

Asters in the yellow grass.

Waterlilies on the further shore.

Forgoing knowledge and provision and place

I have come to compassion

by deepening the profundity of my insignificance.

Low orange moon among the willows,

I am a sad fool

looking for lightning and fireflies

in the benign extremeties of my ashes,

licking the rims of these bells of wisdom

I carry to my grave

to taste their iron for wine.

My nature is radiant

but I assess things like an eclipse.

Of all my mistakes

freedom is the most intolerable perfection.

Of all my perfections

freedom is the best flaw.

PATRICK WHITE