Friday, May 15, 2009

WHO ISN'T TRYING TO LIVE

WHO ISN’T TRYING TO LIVE


Who isn’t trying to live

as they vaguely hope they are

whatever extremes of moderation they’ve gone to

behind all the masks and fraud?

Crosswalks and bridges of fire

trying to get to the other side of themselves

like the promised land, or God,

ladders up to heaven

like vertebrae and ribs,

and ropes like spinal cords

down a well on the moon

that hasn’t enthroned hell in her depths yet,

everyone’s trying to put a face on chaos

they remotely hope is their own.

One by one the plum blossoms

fall to the nightstream

like loveletters

from the branch of the tree

that read them once and then let go.

No one knows where they’re from

or where they’re going.

Some give their wings up

like graduate degrees to the ants

and others are raising their sails

like the flames of a great fire

that consumes the prophet

who wanted to hold his arms up

like a wishbone to the lightning

in the revery of his desire

until everything is ash and nails,

and others who think they’re

the rudders and keels of the flowing.

Sometimes I am nothing more

than this terrible inevitability

of flesh and bone

alone in the vastness of my unknowing

where neither ignorance nor wisdom prevails

and then it’s as clear as stars

on both sides of the window

that everyone’s everyone else’s good guess

as they encounter one another

passing the time

in a crumbling game of graveyard chess.

I don’t know why what’s wise about me

always ends up listening to myself

like a fool’s confession

but I’ve run out of rosaries

like habitable planets

and my homelessness has exposed

the ruse of divining purity

in the afflictions of compassion

as if everything had evolved in sorrow

like a heart-bending occasion for tears

as the mountains that fell

like an avalanche of cornerstones

into the valleys they’ve dug

like pyramids and graves over the years

abide like salt in the eye of the sea.

Intelligence might be an elaborate mode of paranoia,

but eased into the wonder of being here at all

with trees and stars and the midnight rainbows

on the necks of the grackles

and the hectic butterfly among the grape hyacinth,

since I was enlightened

by my absolute uncertainty,

I have gathered all my voices together like leaves

and burned the old texts of myself

for not being much of a liar.

Five petals opened

and one flower bloomed

like a good laugh.

Now my awareness

is a kind of playful fire that doesn’t burn

what it consumes

though the light

still tastes of the jewel

and even as the good-byes deepen their voices

like echoes in wells,

because I’ve grown older

and autumn keeps shedding its choir,

the hellos still take on a life of their own

as if nothing had changed.

An illuminated clown

I am astounded by the profundities

in every jest of being

revelling in the creative hilarity

of its mystic specificity

and how everytime I get serious about something

as if I had just remembered myself,

I bring the house down.

Only a hypocrite is humble enough

to underestimate his own irrelevance,

and go sorting through himself

like a cellphone in the ashes

but for those who have become fire,

aspiration is achievement

and fulfillment and desire,

one breath. In every event

there’s nothing to be

further than you can see.

But that doesn’t mean

take a harder look

as if your life were a book

you were learning to read

or a mirror you had to stare into

until your eyes bleed

to know who you are.

When you stop thinking

every perception is a clue

to who you are

you’ll shine out like a star

ahead of its own light

and stop trying to recognize God

through the featureless eyes

and vigilant simulacra

of a stolen identity.

You will be neither partially

nor wholly yourself

and before and beyond

will not seem

the unending extremities of now

rounding the skull of a clock

that’s lost its way home.

Your seeing will grow deeper than eyes

and you will stop sending

your reflection out

like the moon’s last lifeboat

to haul you up out of the abyss

like a fisherman gilled in the tangled mess

of his own s.o.s.

You’ll let go of the oars

and breathe easy like the sea

and in every blossom of being

you will taste the whole orchard

drunk on its knees in laughter,

not knowing where to begin.

PATRICK WHITE















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