DON'T KNOW WHAT TO ASK FOR ANYMORE

DON’T KNOW WHAT TO ASK FOR ANYMORE

 

Don’t know what to ask for anymore.

Live in a house so big

it doesn’t need a front or back door.

Not all gifts were meant for someone else

and I’ve been given a few along the way

that had my name on them.

And though I opened them

with the delight of a child

and peered astonished into the box

at things I never realized were true

the more I understood they were not mine.

They didn’t belong to anybody.

The drunkeness was mine

but not the wine.

Listening to the rain

strike the plectra of the new leaves

on the black walnut tree

as if I had lived in vain all these years

and I’m just now beginning to acknowledge it.

In the locket of the rock

a cherished fossil

not the magic sword

that once lay between me

and what I loved

to teach my passion obedience

as I waited for signs of things to come.

Some did.

Some didn’t.

Moonlight and lime.

Many stayed hidden most of the time

but a few stepped out of the night

like the firefly beginnings of new universes

or the first drafts of constellations

that went up like the frames

of new houses

in the ghettos of a zodiac

that avoided animal names

like people who wear fur.

That was way back before

this was then

and now wasn’t the waste

of an unbelievable godsend.

But that’s just the way it appears

now here for the moment.

If you’re ruled by your mind

you want to be enlightened.

If you’re ruled by your heart

you want to be blessed.

When one’s the host

the other’s the guest.

The mind bows to the heart

with feeling

and the heart says something revealing.

When has it ever been different?

The paint’s not trying to hide the picture from you.

The marble’s not harbouring some secret form.

The water feels the same in a dewdrop

as it does in a storm.

Yesterday’s radical.

Today’s norm.

The going gets on without knowing

whether it’s a truth without effect

or a first cause lying through its teeth.

The poor man struggles

to be liberated from poverty.

The rich man prays for a thief.

The bright and the dark side of the moon.

Two faces of the same grief.

One asks for everything.

The other asks for more.

One is always missing something.

And the other lives in a big house

without a front or a back door.

 

PATRICK WHITE