MY ROOTS TORN OUT OF BLISS

MY ROOTS TORN OUT OF BLISS

 

My roots torn out of bliss

like a weed from Eden

it’s as obvious as enlightenment

that I’m a that and you’re a this

and consciousness is the fiery archangel

that keeps us apart

like two edges of the same sword

that cuts both ways like the moon.

And when I consider the divine irrelevance

of why I’m not very happy these days

of why the sun shines but nothing grows

I’m as abject as midnight

looking for myself in the shadows

like something I threw away.

Born into this world

to make a home among strangers

the doors we leave open behind us

like a book we mean to come back to one day

to see how it all ends

close gently after us

like the eyelids of wounded flowers

that died in the night

as if all the lonely thresholds

we had to cross to get here

we crossed like dust on the wind.

Even when the cathedrals

come down from their towers

like the rubble of their aspirations

and abase themselves to pray

at the foot of their own foundations

the stars turn as deaf

as ostrakons and machine-guns

to the pleading of exiles

trying to turn the night around

like the seeds of Eden in a fallen apple

from a rootless tree

that walks like a human

down a long road of its own

into the unkempt garden of the world.

 

PATRICK WHITE