IF THE NIGHT WERE TO REMEMBER ME

IF THE NIGHT WERE TO REMEMBER ME

If the night were to remember me

among all these shadows of lucidity,

for the firefly I burned to become,

for the corpse of the candle I am,

By the scars on the window I swear

By these constellations on my arm

I’m still learning to wear

as if I deserved them,

I always kept faith with the wonder;

even if I took the river

and left the road I was on

to go the rest of the way alone

as if it were better off without me

and fire on the water in fall

enraptured by the mystery

I was nothing at all

but the shadows of objects in a mirror

that taught me how to disappear,

a phoenix among the waterbirds,

a breathless secret in a gust of words.

Even the diamonds grow old.

And the light that shines through them.

And the eye that stares and beholds

the message that answers the medium

like the future ghost of tomorrow

of why joy thrives on sorrow

and our deathmasks hide our happiness

where we’d never think to guess

here arrayed before us

this unseen paradise

everywhere just as it is

in all its wretched blessedness.

I’ve looked for grace in the curse.

I’ve eaten the afterbirth of the worst

Taken sanctuary in the shadows

of abandoned embassy windows

keeping an eye on me in the dark.

Smothered in the ghost dust of stars

trying to make a fresh start

I’ve exchanged old wounds for new scars

just to blow on the fire a bit

to gratify the heretic

his penchant for martyrdom

and mine for creative delirium.

Ask me why and I’d say

that was my nature back then.

I didn’t know any other way

to avoid being Zen about Zen.

Now I don’t give a damn.

A true human is not human.

Better to avoid both

as pirated copies of the same truth.

Let go, give up, bye bye,

or cling to the dream in the doorway,

and nothing is purged or clarified.

Words are born with nothing to say.

Insight doesn’t condition chaos.

Seeking a way out of the cosmos

is just another way of finding

a new way to stay that’s binding.

PATRICK WHITE