THE ABSTRACT MUSES OF FRAUD

 

THE ABSTRACT MUSES OF FRAUD

 

The abstract muses of fraud

sluffing their skins

like inspiration

in the dry wells

of a mountain spring

trying to clear their voices

of the world

to sing about nothing.

It’s as if a tree

were to kill all its birds

in order to speak for itself

in flightless words that fall from their lips

like naked fledglings

from treacherous nests.

They write all night

by the light of a candle

that’s burning like an arsonist

in a scriptorium

for a fire with more than one flame.

And even that would be a good beginning

but they think poetry

is an enigmatic, decoding machine

on a World War Two German submarine

and their own words

don’t trust them enough

to tell them there’s water in the periscope

and no one in the last lifeboat

to abandon ship

except the rats who know better

than to go down with the bad captains

true to the scuttled fleets

of the oceanic loveletters

that have broken their sails on the moon,

their hulls crushed like fortune-cookies

against the rocks of their own messages

as they try to swim with the mermaids

like dead fish in a market.

Literature is what Rilke said.

Poetry is what was said to Rilke.

 

PATRICK WHITE