Sunday, August 29, 2010

MYSTERIOUS THE BODY

MYSTERIOUS THE BODY

 

Mysterious the body

these fingers lips eyes skin

this finite that encloses

this infinite within.

The shape of the universe

is the shape of a human.

It flows from the inside out

and the outside in.

A bag of water

with nine holes in it

leaking like the moon.

I live in it like a fish in the sea

swimming through myself alone.

A fish is water being life.

A bird is sky being life.

My body is the earth walking upright

as the grasslands replace the trees like clothes.

I can hold my life and my death

in my own two hands

and when I let go I can breathe through my nose.

Bags between my legs

bags for lungs

a bag for a stomach

is it any wonder

I’m a hunter-gatherer?

A mouth like the entrance

to the underworld

I’m all caves and underground tunnels

a blind star-nosed mole among dark roots

trying to show me the way up to the flowers

by guiding me like water

toward the light.

In my eyes

room for the world.

In my ears

the voice of thunder

the roar of excruciating nightseas

that pull the dragons under.

The abyss speaks

and I can hear it

smell it

touch it

taste it

shape it into a world

I’m making up as a I go along

for company

like a verb with a noun.

Not a subject with an object.

Seeing the eye.

Hearing the ear.

Tasting the tongue.

Smelling the nose.

Touching the skin.

Thinking the mind

if you’re a Buddhist

with a sixth sense.

I look at myself in this body

to see who I might be

and it comes to me like a universe

that abounds with origins

I am a nothing

that just happened to begin.

My senses are an ancient alphabet

buried in the stars.

A hieroglyph written in the sand

by a viper of water

only the wind can understand.

And what’s a mind

if not a Rosetta stone

in an infinite number of voices

that are all my mother-tongue

improvising lullabies

to keep the shadows back?

Humility demands

I approach the universe like an effect

and so I do

but I’m also possessed

of a demonic intelligence

that walks right up to it like a cause

that keeps breaking its own laws in jest.

Maybe your body’s the host.

Maybe your mind’s the guest.

You can bow on either side of the threshold.

You can enter the palace with grace.

You can blunder in like a buffoon.

But there’s no end of the dimensions

to the negative reflections

in the black mirrors of space

that stared out into the emptiness long enough

for the light shining down on the starmud

to turn into the eyes in your face

like a planet slowly evolving an atmosphere

that could see life at the end of the tunnel.

Our genes have found a kind of material immortality

that allows them to inherit themselves

like water and apple-trees.

Who needs to teach chaos theory to the bees

or preach paradise to the flowers?

Maybe the body’s a journey that walks through itself

like the heart follows its bloodstream

like a river out of Eden

with one shoe on and one shoe off

just to keep things balanced

between what is kept

and what is lost

but step by step

pulse by pulse

breath by breath

things pass away into a new start.

Yesterday goes to bed

and wakes up like the future of now.

Or maybe the body’s a vehicle

that knows where we’re going

even if we don’t.

Maybe it’s got destinations

and rendezvous of its own

and we’ve just come along for the ride?

Or we’re riding shotgun on an old stage coach

urgently trying to get home before sundown

with all our passengers alive?

I might be the nightwatchman

but I’m not the foreman

on the nightshift of my cells.

I’m amazed at how much goes on without me

when I hold a lantern up to

what seems to be dreaming me

as if the darkness had windows

I could see through

to see what I’m up to

this far beyond the light.

I feel I’m hollow inside

though I know

how densely packed I am for the ride

all the essential organs

in saddle-bags at the back of a Harley

that isn’t stopping to ask for directions.

Mysterious the body is

and just as the mind makes a point of thought

when it’s trying to be serious

the body can make a comic farce of pain

or a Greek tragedy of pleasure

trying to gouge its eyes out

when it wants your attention.

It’s always the old scar

and I’m always the new wound

sitting like a valley at the foot of the mountain

that knows how to heal the self-afflicted

who keep falling on their swords within

to stay true to their words on the outside

but even that old argument’s wearing a little thin

because it’s just wearing your skin inside out

so people will think you’re honest

if you reveal everything

down to what you last ate

at your last supper.

The bread and fish of a poor messiah.

Or the poisoned mushrooms of a Roman emperor. 

The body is a Druid

sacrificing itself

in the peat bogs of Yorkshire

to keep itself fertile and yielding.

A cult of flesh erects a temple of bone

and dedicates its resurrection to the gods.

My body’s an empire of sentient life-forms

that keeps losing legions in the Teutoberg Forest

to the barbarians at its borders

defending their ancestral homelands.

War always has two eyes open

until peace closes them both

in a dream fit for a human.

The mind may summon the body to a meeting

to discuss the day’s events

but it’s the body that sets the agenda

that removes the presidents

as if J.F.K. and Jimmy Hoffa

just disappeared

for lack of evidence.

Poor body.

Poor old shoe.

How many roads have we walked

all these years

all these miles

and never traveled any further than the distance

from our heels to our toes?

What a long way we had to go

to find out we never left.

What goes out the front door

comes in through the back

like a universe

that’s locked itself out of the house.

Light inside.

Light outside.

But the body

they must share to see

what’s revealed

by their lucidity 

is the same window

that looks through them.

Once you stop approaching things like a key

to your own house

you lost somewhere in the grass

things will stop shutting you out

like a thousand unopened locks.

The body’s a walled city with nine gates

that are always open.

Who needs to knock

on either side of the door?

The body’s an old cave dweller

that paints its dead red

and buries them under the fires of life

as if the past had a future.

A meat-eater opens a theatre

and the prey’s been running ever since.

The mind is an artist.

Able to paint the worlds.

In blood.

In the six colours of the senses

and a seventh that no one’s ever seen.

There’s a perspective of meaning

that establishes the foreground

of an intimate identity

you suppose is yours.

The hot poppy of blood

under your nose

that keeps burning out

like a torch in the cold blues

of the veteran distances

that carry the dead and wounded on their backs

like broken doors that never had a home.

You begin

with a thought

in your mother’s mind

the wayward nudging of a distant notion

like the wings of a tiny insect

trapped in the hair of her arm

fluttering against her skin so gently

she frees it from its plight with a breath

that sways it into being

like the plaything of circumstance.

One thought-moment is the birth of eternity.

You grow a body from the seed

of last year’s flower.

You take it as a sign

that you exist.

You wear it like a spacesuit

on an alien planet

that is so lifeless

it has to import its fossils.

You fill your lungs

with a sky you brought from home.

And what’s a highly evolved brain

but a hunch of starmud

taking a good guess

at what’s ahead

and how it got here in the first place?

Look at all the stars sent out

like doves in a dark flood

to look for land

to look for a tree their light could perch in

that are never coming back.

Your body is the cornerstone of your solitude

in a vast space

that hasn’t finished preparing the ground yet.

Your body may be rooted in the soil

but the original bread of life is light.

Light seeds the worlds

with time and space

in such a way

the future is hindsight

and memory’s a prophecy of what’s to come.

After the harvest

the light sits down with everyone

and breaks bread with the dead like matter.

The body a satyr.

The body a buddha.

The body the Mad Hatter.

The body the ruse

of a crazy wisdom

that dupes it into enlightenment

like a cedar

a star

a waterlily

that flowers out of its own root-fires

like the illuminated sage

of a billion dark desires

burning like the energy of dark matter to be

clarity life lucidity

nur wa nur

light upon light.

The being in the light by which we see.

The body a koan of flesh

that liberates the mind

like a cosmic fortune-cookie

full of emptiness and silence

as if the sea were missing

when you put it up to your ear

to listen to the ocean of your own awareness.

The body the history of food.

The body the psychology of matter.

The body the hysterical mystery of sex.

The body abused and broken.

Driven out like Quasimodo

swinging from the bells of Notre Dame

or Caliban enslaved by Prospero

to do his bidding on demand

as if one hand were wrong

and the other were right.

The body may be dark

but the root isn’t ignorant of the light

and the blossom isn’t afraid of the night

and there’s no original sin

waiting in a garden of delight

like the seeds of damnation.

The mind is crammed with two of every kind.

The body is the ark

that carries them across

the deluge of their own blood

to be scuttled on a mountaintop in Turkey.

And when they die.

The hunter.

Food for the birds.

An offering to the sky.

The farmer.

A seed in the ground.

A tribute to the recurring earth.

We’re divided more by life

than we are by death.

Many atmospheres.

One breath.

Fire is the flag

of a small country

that lives with its shadows in fear

there’s no place for it among the stars

it disappears into

but the body is an empire

walking on water

and in every one of its tears

you can see the sun rise

and the moon set

over a vast night ocean

no one’s crossed yet.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Monday, August 23, 2010

FIRST YELLOW LEAVES ON THE BLACK WALNUT TREES

FIRST YELLOW LEAVES ON THE BLACK WALNUT TREES

 

First yellow leaves on the black walnut trees.

The original digits on the wristwatch of the sun.

Waterproof to any depth you want to drown in.

The trees are homesick.

You can tell by the way they’re giving up.

Comes the season of the dead in harvest time.

The dark abundance of the light

inspired by the muse of the earth

to write poetry

that touchs everyone

like water and wine

whether the apples are gathered or not.

The mystic grape finds enlightenment

in the mouth of a human

when it breaks like a koan

that tastes of something older than the truth.

It’s good to walk through an open field by yourself

as if home were just over the next hill

as the night comes on.

It’s good to feel fulfilled

without knowing much about why

as if some subtle stratagem of the sky

had worked out a truce with life for awhile

and everywhere the armies of the grass

were surrendering their shields like flowers.

It’s late August

and the cedars gather on the hillside

like old testament prophets

come down to the river

to baptize their roots in fire.

Chicory in the eyesocket

of a baby muskrat’s skull

half-buried in the earth like a small moon

that returned to its mother’s breast

several autumns ago.

If the medium is the message

then the message of life

is its timing

and the whole of its content is now.

The dead don’t walk among the living

squawking about things

they’re missing in paradise.

Ten commandments might be good advice

but there’s one bit of wisdom

that wasn’t written on a gravestone

that threatened to bury you

in the valley of the shadow of death

like an avalanche down the world mountain

for ever and ever and ever

should you ever wander off the beaten path

by as much as one black sheep away from the flock:

It’s not your door if you have to knock.

Your life’s the key to your own lock.

You can ask the flowers.

Beauty isn’t enslaved by its own powers.

Clarity sees through the brave

as easily as the cowards

as two sides of the same fear

and no river’s flowing the wrong way to the sea.

Autumn is a lonely voice

that sadly rejoices in what it must be

but what mad wonders

it hides under everyone’s breath

like marvels it keeps to itself.

The best place to hide

is out in the open

like being and seeing and thinking. 

And if you smell the wind

at this time of year

you can tell that it’s been drinking

to drown its wanderlust in words

heading south with the birds

who carry the souls of the dead away

like fires that ascended to heaven

on a ladder of bones

and a spinal cord

threaded through the eye of a needle.

A snake sheds its skin and vertebrae at last

and turns its scales into wings

to become a dragon

that burns its bridges behind it

like waterbirds without directions

disappearing from their own reflections

before the first ice.

I reach the top of an old hill  

and I can see what I look like

a long way off from here

as Venus breaks like a mirror

low on the horizon

through the black mascara

on the eyelashes of the backlit pines.

And there are spirits of the air

summoned by the darkness

with eyes that glow

like charcoal on the fires

of yesterday’s myth of origins

to look up at the stars

and make up some kind of a story

about what they’re doing there in the first place

like the afterlife of the mystery

of the night before time and space

as if the history of our prophetic skulls

could still foretell the future

of an advanced race of cannibals.

You are what you eat.

But the time is long past

when I could tear my heart out

and offer it up to the unappeasable gods

like the fruit of a human

who has wandered the earth

like a rootless tree

true to his own homelessness

like a fire that kept faith with a heretic

who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Who would be there to receive it?

If I wrapped it up like a foundling

and laid it on the stairs of the abyss

late at night when no one was watching

or sent it down the river

in a basket I wove from cattails

like a baby in an empty lifeboat

drifting down its bloodstream

on its way to something better

than a promised land it couldn’t enter

what life on what distant star

would bend down and pick it up

like a message in a bottle

from life stranded on an island galaxy

waiting to hear the likeness of its own echo

in the voice of the light that answered

help is on the way?

And that sword’s been long drawn

out of the barren stone of the moon

that gave it back to the waters

like the blade of an old perfection

it once fell upon

like the reflection of a man

with a noble calling

in the absence of volunteers.

I haven’t sacrificed my innocence

to that invincible agony in years.

And there’s more than one crown

I’ve thrown off a bridge

like a trinket of my powers

to self-destruct

as if I knew somehow

you can’t keep

what you won’t give away.

You can run deliberately straight as a highway

or weave spontaneously like a river

but if the first

just regard the extreme chaos

of conditioned conciousness

and if the latter

you’ll shed many lives

like skies and skin you’ve grown out of

following the long journey of yourself

all the way from your tail to your head

passing like a serpent through the grass

as if you had a secret

you keep to yourself

that were better left unsaid.

But there’s a third extreme

that just as intense as the others

which is the way I stay the course.

I put wings on a horse

that’s never known a saddle

or been bruised by the stars like spurs

and we’re up up and away

as if we’d never heard of the Medusa.

The Great Square of Pegasus

going down behind the pines

like a card up my sleeve.

I don’t want to turn anyone into stone

or blind them with my shield

as if the light knew judo

and how to use my enemy’s strengths

against it.

I don’t want to decapitate anyone

who was once the priestess

who fed sweetcakes and honey

to the oracular pythons of Delphi

and long before that

along with her two Gorgonic sisters

was the virgin wife crone phase of the moon

shedding her graces like skin.

I’ve jumped into enough snakepits

for one lifetime

to know how easy it is to get in

and how nearly impossible it is to get out.

One fang of the moon kills you.

The other heals you.

But you’re never the same after that

and there are scars that hurt worse than the wound.

But you can see things before the arising of signs

and there’s a crazy wisdom that embodies you

like a candle in the darkness

talking to itself.

And I can hear what the serpent said

quietly to Eve

just before it offered her the apple

from the forbidden tree:  

Don’t lie to anyone you’re trying to believe.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


FIRST YELLOW LEAVES ON THE BLACK WALNUT TREES

FIRST YELLOW LEAVES ON THE BLACK WALNUT TREES

 

First yellow leaves on the black walnut trees.

The original digits on the wristwatch of the sun.

Waterproof to any depth you want to drown in.

The trees are homesick.

You can tell by the way they’re giving up.

Comes the season of the dead in harvest time.

The dark abundance of the light

inspired by the muse of the earth

to write poetry

that touchs everyone

like water and wine

whether the apples are gathered or not.

The mystic grape finds enlightenment

in the mouth of a human

when it breaks like a koan

that tastes of something older than the truth.

It’s good to walk through an open field by yourself

as if home were just over the next hill

as the night comes on.

It’s good to feel fulfilled

without knowing much about why

as if some subtle stratagem of the sky

had worked out a truce with life for awhile

and everywhere the armies of the grass

were surrendering their shields like flowers.

It’s late August

and the cedars gather on the hillside

like old testament prophets

come down to the river

to baptize their roots in fire.

Chicory in the eyesocket

of a baby muskrat’s skull

half-buried in the earth like a small moon

that returned to its mother’s breast

several autumns ago.

If the medium is the message

then the message of life

is its timing

and the whole of its content is now.

The dead don’t walk among the living

squawking about things

they’re missing in paradise.

Ten commandments might be good advice

but there’s one bit of wisdom

that wasn’t written on a gravestone

that threatened to bury you

in the valley of the shadow of death

like an avalanche down the world mountain

for ever and ever and ever

should you ever wander off the beaten path

by as much as one black sheep away from the flock:

It’s not your door if you have to knock.

Your life’s the key to your own lock.

You can ask the flowers.

Beauty isn’t enslaved by its own powers.

Clarity sees through the brave

as easily as the cowards

as two sides of the same fear

and no river’s flowing the wrong way to the sea.

Autumn is a lonely voice

that sadly rejoices in what it must be

but what mad wonders

it hides under everyone’s breath

like marvels it keeps to itself.

The best place to hide

is out in the open

like being and seeing and thinking. 

And if you smell the wind

at this time of year

you can tell that it’s been drinking

to drown its wanderlust in words

heading south with the birds

who carry the souls of the dead away

like fires that ascended to heaven

on a ladder of bones

and a spinal cord

threaded through the eye of a needle.

A snake sheds its skin and vertebrae at last

and turns its scales into wings

to become a dragon

that burns its bridges behind it

like waterbirds without directions

disappearing from their own reflections

before the first ice.

I reach the top of an old hill  

and I can see what I look like

a long way off from here

as Venus breaks like a mirror

low on the horizon

through the black mascara

on the eyelashes of the backlit pines.

And there are spirits of the air

summoned by the darkness

with eyes that glow

like charcoal on the fires

of yesterday’s myth of origins

to look up at the stars

and make up some kind of a story

about what they’re doing there in the first place

like the afterlife of the mystery

of the night before time and space

as if the history of our prophetic skulls

could still foretell the future

of an advanced race of cannibals.

You are what you eat.

But the time is long past

when I could tear my heart out

and offer it up to the unappeasable gods

like the fruit of a human

who has wandered the earth

like a rootless tree

true to his own homelessness

like a fire that kept faith with a heretic

who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Who would be there to receive it?

If I wrapped it up like a foundling

and laid it on the stairs of the abyss

late at night when no one was watching

or sent it down the river

in a basket I wove from cattails

like a baby in an empty lifeboat

drifting down its bloodstream

on its way to something better

than a promised land it couldn’t enter

what life on what distant star

would bend down and pick it up

like a message in a bottle

from life stranded on an island galaxy

waiting to hear the likeness of its own echo

in the voice of the light that answered

help is on the way?

And that sword’s been long drawn

out of the barren stone of the moon

that gave it back to the waters

like the blade of an old perfection

it once fell upon

like the reflection of a man

with a noble calling

in the absence of volunteers.

I haven’t sacrificed my innocence

to that invincible agony in years.

And there’s more than one crown

I’ve thrown off a bridge

like a trinket of my powers

to self-destruct

as if I knew somehow

you can’t keep

what you won’t give away.

You can run deliberately straight as a highway

or weave spontaneously like a river

but if the first

just regard the extreme chaos

of conditioned conciousness

and if the latter

you’ll shed many lives

like skies and skin you’ve grown out of

following the long journey of yourself

all the way from your tail to your head

passing like a serpent through the grass

as if you had a secret

you keep to yourself

that were better left unsaid.

But there’s a third extreme

that just as intense as the others

which is the way I stay the course.

I put wings on a horse

that’s never known a saddle

or been bruised by the stars like spurs

and we’re up up and away

as if we’d never heard of the Medusa.

The Great Square of Pegasus

going down behind the pines

like a card up my sleeve.

I don’t want to turn anyone into stone

or blind them with my shield

as if the light knew judo

and how to use my enemy’s strengths

against it.

I don’t want to decapitate anyone

who was once the priestess

who fed sweetcakes and honey

to the oracular pythons of Delphi

and long before that

along with her two Gorgonic sisters

was the virgin wife crone phase of the moon

shedding her graces like skin.

I’ve jumped into enough snakepits

for one lifetime

to know how easy it is to get in

and how nearly impossible it is to get out.

One fang of the moon kills you.

The other heals you.

But you’re never the same after that

and there are scars that hurt worse than the wound.

But you can see things before the arising of signs

and there’s a crazy wisdom that embodies you

like a candle in the darkness

talking to itself.

And I can hear what the serpent said

quietly to Eve

just before it offered her the apple

from the forbidden tree:  

Don’t lie to anyone you’re trying to believe.

 

PATRICK WHITE