Saturday, January 14, 2012

IF I COULD CRY AGAIN


IF I COULD CRY AGAIN

If I could cry again, as once I cried for you, if
I could saturate this dark fist of a heart that closed up
and hardened from that flower so long ago, trying
to hang on to the jewel, the pearl, the star, the eye of the issue;
if I could turn this stone rose freaked with harsh minerals,
back into that night you drew the blade of the moon
across the wrist of the bridge you were standing on, waiting
it seemed your whole lifetime, trembling
like a drop of shadow-flavoured water
from the tip of a spear of stargrass
for the wind to shake you loose from your agony,
a lost earring, I could put out this root-fire
that runs underground from cedar to cedar, person to person,
consuming its way without flame
through the long valley of the sorrows and years
where I buried you like a storm that had swallowed the hot sword
of its own lightning; I could affirm the black ash
of that night that has gone on dying in me ever since,
I could green it with daylilies and vetch
and the frog splash of lachrymose junipers beginning to rain.
I could stop meaning what I say when I say
crueller solitudes are born of the pain that’s endured
like a grave with no eyelid staring into the sun
waiting for eclipses to fall out of the light
like coins from a one-armed bandit
that gashed the vein of its motherlode
to die in a windfall of poppies, a junkie of luck,
than the strange loneliness of the losers
who cash their winnings in, and bleed to death.
I could mean something else other than heroin,
I could mean a new religion, a successful skin graft
of happier metaphors and cooler tattoos,
brighter constellations than the needle tracks
that loaded the deck of your dark zodiacs
with star-crossed lovers in public washrooms
tying you off with the spinal cord
you carried around in your kit. I could stop the bleeding,
I could put the fire out, I could look at your death
square in the eyes
and haul in a god to answer it
like you did me that last night
when I asked for signs of life
and you quoted maxims to live by from the razor-blade
revealed to you alone on your holy mountain
before you dumped on paradise
like a shovel full of dirt, a spoonful of ashes,
an avalanche of hurt. I could open my hand
and fill your absence in
with things that begin. I could scrawl
a reason to live on your mirror in lipstick
and marry you in our honeymoon coffin
behind closed doors
in a downpour of wedding rings
I stole from the dead.
O, baby, my lost one, my fire in the wood,
you could be my candle-holder
and angel-food for good
if only I could cry again,
as once you knew I could.

PATRICK WHITE

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