SIT WARMLY HERE WITH ME AWHILE

SIT WARMLY HERE WITH ME AWHILE

Sit warmly here with me awhile

and I will smother you in fireflies

until your aura looks like

a dandelion constellation

or a globular cluster of first magnitude stars.

My scars have exhumed the knives of old wounds.

And though I confide in the void

like an echo returning to its own voice

or a breath to the sacred groves of the lungs at sunset

and superseded my quota of regrets

to make an expandable universe liveable

every firefly of insight’s

got the engine of a dragon behind it

and it burns like a dark clarity within me.

Wrap your silence and mystery around me

like a chrysalis or cloak

and let me rest in your indivisibility awhile

until I disappear deep in your eyes

like a nightbird into its longing.

Let me sit around the lonely fire of your heart

as if I were the only house of the zodiac

who comes to you like an illicit love affair

with its lights still on

long after all the others have gone out.

My solitude is bruised by an abyss

that keeps digging deeper into me

and sometimes it feels as if

it’s looking for water and a well

and then other times it’s a midnight burial

of someone I can only catch a glimpse of

once and a while under a full moon

that looks like an undertaker

through the leafless veils of the weeping willows

digging his own grave

but feels just like a spade hitting my skull

like a strange form of paydirt

buried like the black pearl of the new moon

in a hope chest of star mud.

Take the coin from under my tongue

like the last sacred syllable

of my unconditional humanity

and throw it down this black hole in my heart

like the moon in a wishing well

and embrace me as if I were not dead awhile.

Out of the ashes the smoke and the flames

like two candles under the stars

let’s make up myths of origin

where the gods have no names

until the wildflowers that have outgrown

the gates of the Garden of Eden

look back at where they come from

like a long way away

and give them one

like the elders of an Ojibway tribe

decide on the names of the new born

each according to the totem of a dream.

Pull this thorn from my eye

like the eyelash of the last crescent of the moon

and let me see you face to face

without a thousand and one tears between us.

I shall glorify you like a mosque in lapis lazuli

that can no more contain your image

than the day the night

or one constellation

the whole of the Milky Way.

I shall paint your portrait in picture-music

like the moon reflected on the black water gardens

of the Taj Mahal in mystic hues

of nocturnal waterlilies and cobalt blues

to highlight your eyelids when you sleep

and on your lips rose drops of blood

to wake you like a kiss from your dream

when the waterbirds rise from the lake.

Receive me like a sword into your depths

I throw in tribute from a bridge that crosses over

to the other side of myself

as if you were the far shore of my mindstream

come near to sit with me here awhile

and reminisce like water

on the things that have been and passed

as we listen to the tender laughter of the waves.

I will lift up my shirt

and show you the scars of all the holy wars

I’ve fought with myself like a faithful heretic

who knew he was doomed to lose

and the spots where the spearheads of insight

penetrated my heart like a voodoo doll

baptized in hot whiskey and cold blood

to take a message to the gods

about human suffering

in a language they could understand

wasn’t just the echo of their own voices.

Sit with me here awhile like a face beside a mirror

looking out upon the same starfields

without a trace of our own reflections in the view

and I will teach you

the healing powers of a wounded mouth

like the secret grammar of a grail that seeks itself.

PATRICK WHITE