AND THE WILLOWS DOWN BY THE BANKS OF THE TAY

AND THE WILLOWS DOWN BY THE BANKS OF THE TAY

And the willows down by the banks of the Tay

whisper through their veils

like ladies of the lake

where autumn walks like fire on the water

or the marriage bed of a Viking funeral ship

as the sun goes down like a ferry

into the underworld of the west

and all these words of passage I say like birds flying

high over head with the souls of the dead

I lay down like swords in tribute to the river

as if I were returning tears to the mirrors they came from.

Maple leaves scratch like the quills of bat-winged scholars

at the parched manuscripts

lying everywhere at my feet

trying to trace their ancestral bloodlines

back through a lineage of zodiacal kings

while the Library of Alexandria burns.

All scholars are arsonists at heart

as flammable as naphtha in birch bark.

If God were to talk to anyone now

right here in Perth Ontario Canada

it would still be through a burning bush

that would sound like the voice

of the phoenix in the sumac.

Mystic immolations of an Arab spring

spreading its wings for a poet or a prophet

to jump up on Pegasus or Buraq

and fly as if you had a star under your saddle

and not a spur or burr of discontent

that makes you feel tongue-twisted and petty

beside abject comparisons with Icarus and Aaron.

Stars soon to add some glamour to the sky

as the willows turn their weeping veils

into the shawls of grieving widows.

I’ve got nothing in particular to cry for

but I admire the eloquence of those

who’ve still got something to lose

like daylilies that can’t afford a face-lift

or the shell of the baby turtle on its back

like the sun disc of a Mayan calendar

that was destroyed by boyish malice

before it could live long enough

to be old enough to be doomed

by its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Autumn is a seance of long-forgotten fragrances.

Oceanic elixirs and and sad sad wines

trying to keep their chin up

like wild grape vines against the weather

that sends their bruised amphorae to the bottom

with heavy eyelids and tunnel vision.

The air is sweet and thick and pendulous

as a bell in a burning church

that’s been to one too many funerals.

Bring on the night

like the deepest inspiration of the light

in the nightbird’s breast

and let the lost harvests and unfulfilled longings

that stretch for light years out over the abyss

like the strings of a cosmic guitar

or the harp I made from the wishbone

stuck in my throat like a sacred syllable

that goes witching for water on the moon

in the watersheds of my voice.

Bring tears of blood to my eyes

raised up out of the well of my being

and holding my horned skull up to Jupiter in Aries

let me drink to the hidden beauty of the singing

and all those oceanic veils of seeing

that fall away like the eyelids of roses

the starmaps of asters

from a beautiful woman’s face.

Old enough now to celebrate

things I know I’ll never know again.

Young lovers jay walking across a busy street

hand in hand as if

the other were the other’s missing link.

The wide-eyed stargazers

with no scars or bruises on their telescopes

elevated now by their amazement to sidereal heights

who will later be deepened by it

as the darkness grows more sublime than the light

and radiance sways into ripeness

and the candles go out one by one

to clarify the long autumnal way home

like nightwatchmen just before the break of dawn

having done their rounds

sit down at the crossroads

where the celestial equator

intersects the ecliptic at the equinoctial colure

and opening the gates of their lanterns

let the stars and fireflies out of the mason jars

that were the only light they had to go by

that kept the others lit.

Even as the utilitarian chandeliers

of the streetlamps come on

like a constellation of runway suns

that light up in unison at midnight

to give our long departed gods somewhere to land.

PATRICK WHITE