NOT ELATED WHEN YOU'RE UP

NOT ELATED WHEN YOU’RE UP

Not elated when you’re up,

not in despair when you’re down,

your joys like oxygen

and your sorrows eyes in the night,

the moon’s half shadow, half light,

breathe yourself deeply and darkly in

out of the cool bliss of your life

as if every breath were the summons and the ghost

that comes like a spirit to a seance

when creation asks if you’re there.

I couldn’t really see the orchard in bloom

and apples on the moon

until I learned to shed my face,

and there are orphans beading rosaries

out of the eyes I’ve worn out on the seeing

like waves that have drowned in the swimmer

just to remember the names of God I’ve forgotten.

One lifetime doesn’t wait upon another

like gladiators in the arena of the clock

or letters in the mailboxes

of the houses of the zodiac around the block,

or one generation precede or follow another

like footprints down to the shore

where the angels have fins

and the demons have wings.

Is the caterpillar old and the butterfly young

when it emerges like the moon from its cloud?

I’ve looked through the eyes

of everyone who has ever existed

as they do now and will

as intimately as any I used to call my own

and not once have I ever seen myself as I am

until I realized there was no one

to look for or through

who wasn’t moonlight in a drop of dew

seen from the inside like autumn geese in a nightsky

and that there are some mirrors even the stars can’t look into.

Most long for happiness, and a few, fulfillment,

but if you go looking for happiness in a war

you’ll turn it into a weapon, a victory,

the quicksand cornerstone of loss

and again, there will be tears.

It’s much harder to win the peace than the war

and the discipline of the warrior lover

is beyond the finesse of the conqueror

who doesn’t understand

that happiness is the muse of peace,

not something that can be earned or won

anymore than inspiration can.

And it’s noble and brave and necessary as water

to explore the darkness and the mystery,

but how few have dared the dangerous wilds of their joy,

the unwalked high fields of their happiness

where paradise is always this before you now

hung like a perilous jewel from the end of your nose

you’re trying to catch with your tongue?

And it’s true, one taste of that and you’re done,

and the serpent in the tree that swallowed the egg

flies and sings with the bird

who can read the serpent like music

and look where you may

among all the amazing myriads in the whole of the eye-gaping sky

and you will not find one star opposite another.

PATRICK WHITE