DARK TERM

DARK TERM

 

Dark term.

Death.

I listen to the black walnuts at night

shaken loose by the wind

thudding like tiny skulls on the wet earth.

Cold autumn rain.

Tears of the crow.

The long enterprise of letting go.

The open gate at the end of the abandoned garden.

The hopeless intimacy of a broken window

talking to itself after all the stars have gone out

like a house that was wounded by people

into an uninhabitable solitude

that keeps its feelings to itself.

No godsend of being

on the other side

of what it means

to have been born of a mother.

The eyelessness of not seeing

time show up at your funeral

like a friend you haven’t seen for years

who lost your forwarding address

like a sleepwalker

in a labyrinth of mirrors

that couldn’t dream his way out of himself.

Inconsolable emptiness

of face and hands

unmoved by the unmoveable

unsummoned into the presence

of the mother of signs

to be given names and purposes

in a medium of mind

that bleeds

like a sea of watercolours in the rain.

Ceaseless pain.

Crisis devolving into catastrophe.

The lost art of aspiration

casting a long last look

at the shadow of death behind it

delineating what cannot be contained.

Death isn’t what’s attained

with a last gesture of breath

on the cold windowpane of the void.

It’s the unattainable that finally achieves us

without trying.

It’s perfection that reaches beyond itself

into the unknown depths of time

beyond its veiled reflection

in the flawed simulacra

of the human mind 

to recover its likeness

like a masterpiece

of pure picture-music

from each one of us

enraptured by this life

that’s playing us

like the works of a dead genius

thrown on the fire

along with everything else.

For the lack of one heartbeat more

the last door opens horizontally

like a coffin lid to the stars

not a telescope

closing its one good eye

as if space could ever

run out on itself like time

trying to catch up to the light

or that which is departed

never be returned

because the distances

measured in more dimensions

than there are miles in the journey to here

aren’t dark enough

to make things clear

as black walnuts

nothing ever perishs

this far from home.

 

PATRICK WHITE