NOT MUCH TO SAY

NOT MUCH TO SAY

Not much to say to anyone

that I haven’t said before

and what I’m listening to

is unwound in my widening wake

like the threads of a song

I once lived through and through and through.

Nothing is true. Nothing is false.

And there’s no witness to anything

so it’s impossible to be anyone else.

Spent a hundred dollars on birdfeeders

but outside the window, no bird.

I’m not building a stage in a stadium

to make an appearance

among my own thoughts

like an encouraging word.

If I am not yet wholly insane

then there still might be a slight chance

that I am perfectly absurd.

And everything I’ve ever said

has been the orphan of a lost voice

winging its way like an echo through a dark valley

that wakes up like a wound

that thought it was dead

and flashes through my head

like rain on the heiroglyphs of a dry creekbed.

But right now

I’m not looking for my own footprints

in the starmud that walked this way

a million years ago

when I lifted myself up off my own ass

to check out what was moving in the high grass.

Things pass. The monkey grows old

making up reasons

and the plack of conciousness

hardens like granite

around the jewel of life

that keeps flowing away like water

whether you drown in your own fever

in the inflammation of the city

or expire like the last tear of the third eye

of an exhausted mirage in a mystic desert

that’s forgotten how to cry.

PATRICK WHITE