Tuesday, March 16, 2010

I IMAGINE SPACE AND TIME

I IMAGINE SPACE AND TIME

 

I imagine space and time and light

not saturated with a pervasive intelligence

that wanders through the multiverse like a mind

musing upon itself

like a hidden secret that wished to be known

and is

but as wavelengths of thought as they are

toying themselves into matter

almost as the afterlife of a darker issue

that hasn’t quite come to peace with itself yet

that used to go by the name of God

but has recently started to call herself

a Unified Field Theory.

But however you wash

the old simulacra off like soot

on the inside of a lamp

or refurbish the Sistine Chapel Roof

with colours for proof

that things weren’t always this dull

everywhere people continue to look

for symbols and signs memes and similies

as if they were still one of the main themes of evolution

if not the prime mover.

The mind transcends thought

like a bird the sky

or a fish the water it’s swimming in

or a painter her creation

and though you can’t say what it is

because in everything it speaks for itself

and to seek your mind with your mind

is to mount your horse

to look for your horse

is to reach out with one hand

to pull the other up over a precipice

in the hope of saving yourself

like a godsend from a bad fall,

you can sit still and let your mind know you

like something delightfully new about itself

it’s just come upon

like an unknown world

that’s been growing

inauspiciously under its eyelids all this time.

And you can dress it up anyway you like

like a mirror that’s trying to stand on its own

just before it goes out into the world

to see for itself what it’s all about

and you can call it a world view in the making

as the branes break in hyperspace

like a profusion of cosmic bubbles

but you’re just seeing double

through your hydra-headed mind

what it means to dream when you’re blind.

The age of nothing is now

and the place where you find it is here.

The moment you add a past and a future to it

like a head and a tail

the Titanic’s set sail

and you’re making constant course corrections

in your wake

like the path of a glass snake through the night grass.

Things don’t come.

And things don’t pass.

The Japanese plum blossoms in autumn

and its leaves fall in the spring.

The morning doves lose their voices

and the crows start to sing.

When has it ever been

any other way?

The lucky day is when you discover

it’s all one day.

Meaning the eternal specious irreproachable present

of this Bergsonian moment now

where there is no death or birth

and whatever youre becoming

is the way you change to stay the way you are.

The star looks past its own light

into the vast bipolar night

that includes it in its darkness

like love at first sight.

And God knows her own mind

in everything and everyone one of us

like the moon reflected

in myriad drops of water

like eyes she looks through for a sign

she can see again and again and again

what’s she’s made of herself in her solitude

wasn’t in vain.

The answers call for questions

and the questions explain.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


I'VE LOST THE URGENCY TO BE

I’VE LOST THE URGENCY TO BE

 

I’ve lost the urgency to be

anything other than what I am.

I’m not the ambulance on its way

to another emergency

I used to be.

Things have calmed down for the moment.

No oceans of commotion roll over me.

No undertow of mixed emotions

sucks me under.

And I don’t know

if this is what I really want to say

but the starmud’s settled to the bottom of the mirror

and things are very clear.

There’s no one here to tell anyway

because the darkness explains itself

and the light always gets the last word

at the end of the day.

As far as I can see

on this one-shored sea of life

there’s not a sail in sight

like a live blossom on a dead tree

and all my event horizons

have taken a deep breath

and withdrawn like tides.

And if I ever thought I needed to be saved

I’ve given up hope of rescue

like a voice in a bottle riding a wave

headed for the rocks.

I’ve learned to open the door

before anyone knocks.

And I can see what isn’t there

as if it were a lifeboat in the fog

singing merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

life is but a dream.

I’ve stopped bending my light

in the eyebeams of the jewel-cutters

who cut along the seams of my lifelines

like doctors undoing the stitches

of wounds I’d forgotten how to feel.

Unreality isn’t the other side of real

no more than a wave

is the opposite of water

or the sky is contradicted by a bird.

But I haven’t retired into the grand harmony

by going back the way I came

like a planet that’s tired of beating around

the burning bush

when it speaks to the sun

about what it wants done tomorrow.

I haven’t changed like the seasons over the years

beating my cannon back

into labouring ploughshares

listening to the bells of sorrow

that toil and toll for everyone.

I don’t need to finish what I didn’t begin.

And I refuse to perish for my origin

by becoming my own assassin

in a holy war of one

against an estranged infidel

that rose to heaven where he fell

for his own illusion 

like a mirror off the wall.

I don’t answer the call

of anything but the wind

when it’s trembling with stars

to turn my eyes toward the same vision

of things as they appear to be

when clarity isn’t troubled by indecision.

Peace isn’t learning to live according to your scars

after the scalpel of the moon

has made its last incision

and removed what ailed you about her

like the tumour of a pearl

stuck through the tongue of an oyster.

And the greatest absurdity of all

is undermining your own powers like quicksand

when the walls don’t fall at your command

and the sea and the sun 

like King Canute and Joshua

when you ask them to stay in their place

like the shakey time-honoured cornerstones

of a nomadic race founded on bones

break into gales of laughter

and blow the world like dust in your face.

Happiness is not a mystical chalice

you can go looking for anymore

that you can squeeze inspiration

from the tit of a virgin muse.

Happiness just happens all by itself

like everything else in existence.

And don’t fall for that old ruse of an ego

that suggests you accept

that you’ve been neglected

at your own insistence

as if you had some say in the matter.

Listen to any fire long enough

and you’ll end up talking about water.

Pray for peace and war breaks out.

Look for guidance

and you deepen the loss.

Follow your star far enough

and you’ll wind up blind.

Seek enlightenment

and you’ll lose your mind.

 

PATRICK WHITE