THE SIMPLE UNFORCED ACTIONS OF A MAN
ALONE AT NIGHT
The simple unforced actions of a man
alone at night
for hours by himself
when nothing of the world
calls upon him to be anyone but
himself.
He does small trivial things
like replacing the red flint in his
Zippo lighter
in preparation for lifelong cosmic
projects
he’s meant to execute since boyhood.
Even the windows don’t place any
demands upon him
though he looks for the occasional star
above the roofs of the buildings across
the street
and whose lights are still on
in the rooms of those the darkness
hurts the worst.
He micromanages his body
hair by hair,
tamps back his cuticles
to get a better view of the moonrise
over the horizons of his thumbnails
the way a man who’s read too many
good books
proofreads his garden in the morning.
He enjoys a porous intimacy with the
night
as it soaks into his bones
like lamp oil into western red cedar
and deepens the darkness
with mahogany poetry
almost the colour of blood.
He makes a sandwich.
He fills a coffee cup.
It’s winter and he feels
the demotic inflections of temperature
as the air gives up its pretense
of being cooly debonair
for more peasant aspirations
to turn the heat up higher.
The sublimities of three a.m.
The last streetcleaner and garbage
truck have gone by,
perfecting the desolation of the
deserted street.
Not quite peace, not quite emptiness,
the sweetness of the hour suggests
it doesn’t matter what it is.
Absolute solitude, thickening silence,
as if the darkness were a way
of mourning the death of stars
most people never even saw shining
so deeply into their eyes while they
slept
they penetrated their dreams
and touched their hearts in a way
that didn’t wake them up.
If anyone were to ask him
what he felt like right now
he’d say he felt like space.
Unmoved somehow
without inhibiting anyone’s passage.
He’d tell you that it isn’t time
that moves.
That the greatest gift
anyone could give to the world
is their stillness.
As if you were returning your cup
to the river you drew it from.
He stares at the small red Zen lamp
with its friendly infernal glow
embossed with the leaves and seeds of
autumn
like fossils in the Burgess Shale
next to the recovering snakeplant in
the window.
Blasting caps and fireflies of poetry
go off in his mind like images and
insights
of distant lightning and thunder,
and though he feels like an empty bus
terminal
he knows how stupid it is
to wait for something that’s
spontaneous.
Let that live that can.
Something will sooner or later.
It isn’t true that nature abhors a
vacuum
or nihilo ex nihilo fecit,
nothing
comes of nothing.
Nature adores a vacuum
the way a poet is possessed by a muse.
Or some vandal
with a genius for disobedience
passing by a freshly painted wall
loves his spray bomb
just like any other Neanderthal.
He lights a violet candle
and a stick of patchouli incense
as if both were of vital importance.
The ghosts of the cigarette-smoke in
the room
gravitate like gulls
toward the lighthouse like a seance
only too happy to go up in flames
and attain a state of perfect
combustion.
If the world weren’t constantly
emptying itself out
like the moon from its skullcup
or a man alone at night in a small town
waiting for the next star to appear
between the slow clouds in his window
there’d be no more room for
inspiration.
Even a fallen gate hanging on by a
hinge
in the untended starfields
lets more in than it can pour out.
There’s an absence of people and
things
that were there and aren’t anymore
and that emptiness tastes
of the inconsolable sadness
of a desert that mothers mirages
only to outlive them all.
And there’s the emptiness
of a confined space
when it reminds time
that it is also eternity.
And that can sever
and shock you like a knife
you just pulled on yourself
to keep your distance from death.
And then there’s the unconditioned
clarity
of a nothingness that holds you up
like a mirror to your own nature
and says put a face to this.
And poems emerge like enlightened liars
that are true to their own
knowing that’s all there is.
PATRICK WHITE
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