Monday, January 2, 2012

UNDER THIS BLACK UMBRELLA


UNDER THIS BLACK UMBRELLA

Under this black umbrella, the eyelid of the black rose
that eclipses the pearls and starfish that I feed it,
my second skin tattooed with a map of undiscovered constellations,
this black poppy of a sky ribbed like a tent
with the bones of bats and dragons, stalked on the spine
of an interrogative scorpion who reverses questions
like a fishing hook, my heart feathered for sacrifice
and pierced by its stinger for bait, though I never know
what god I’m dedicated to, what ghoul of the depths
rises to swallow me whole, I have risked my whole life
against the run of my luck, open in the house
under the shadow of its wing, following a funeral for years
that has lost its way to the grave. No need to tell you
that the mourners have turned to salt
and wandered away with the rain; no need
to tell you that I never knew the deceased
except as an elegant sorrow famous among clowns.
Under this black umbrella, this widow-veil,
this pygmy parachute, this mistaken sail of a lethal love triste
that jumps from attic windows, a deacon of descents,
there are blind birds who have never known the dawn
and seeds that wince in the light, painters
who keep the drapes drawn and their sunglasses on;
and if I were to mention the impoverished nights
I slummed with colloquial carbons while flies
bounced like black holes against the ceiling
looking for emergency exits beyond their event horizons,
I could only bore you with broken-hearted cosmologies.
Under this black umbrella, this shallow bell
with a toad’s tongue, this bitter chandelier
inverted like a crown of thorns that’s had enough to drink,
this black dwarf that’s dwindled from the shining
like the memory of a miscarriage of the light
from years ago, mascara comets rave of happier assassinations
and liberated embryos; life gets around
on the stepping stones of pregnant meteors
and there’s a spider that hangs above me like a plectrum or a hand
trying to master bass-runs on my spinal cord.
Under this black umbrella, this mouth that gapes,
this broad-brimmed palmer’s hat, this radio dish
that begs for wavelengths it can understand
from a dying civilization on a catastrophic brain
tilted on its axis below the equatorial plane
of a decaying orbit light-years away from salvation
and all the lifeboats gone, and the only signs
of advanced intelligence, this swansong in extraterrestrial code,
there are no holy lands, there are no cruel exemptions left.

PATRICK WHITE

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