BEGIN

BEGIN

Begin anywhere.

Topple fall jump stumble plunge

into the eyeless abyss

into the roadless homelessness

of not knowing where you’re going

or who’ll you’ll be by the time you get there.

Slash your way through the stretched canvas

of a painted sky

like a rogue star

with the blood of Betelgeuse

dripping from your brush if you must

perform your own Caesarian

to get out of yourself like an egg

into the Big Abide Beyond

and stretch your wings from dusk till dawn.

Don’t hover like a cloud over starmaps

trying to work out a flight plan

waiting for the weather to clear for take-off.

In an infinite universe such as this

wherever you are

in this spatial lost and found

you’re always the center of everything.

How could you not know where you are

or who

when there’s nowhere to go

and no one to be

that isn’t centred in its own origin eternally?

But it helps to get a jump on your own light like a star

now and again

if you want to stay in the game

long enough to turn your farce into a legend

that isn’t hard on the eyes.

So begin.

Like a surprise.

Like a leftover birthday you found in the attic

you were saving for a special day that never came.

Get it on.

Begin.

Break the mirror.

Throw a rock through your own reflection.

There’s no countdown

for a firefly or lightning bolt

no fuse on the Big Bang that became the universe

so let’s just have ignition

spontaneously timeless and complete

go off

get out

get down

like the primordial atom

with your own expression of yourself

before the arising of signs

teaches the flowers

they mustn’t colour

outside the lines of themselves.

Don’t let the Lilliputians tie Gulliver down again.

Don’t imperil Pauline

by tying her to the tracks

like a rehabilitated junkie

to wait for a train in vain

on the same old beaten path

your thoughts tread like cattle

back to the barn of your brain at dusk.

Or horses when it’s burning.

Begin in your aftermath.

Shoulder the world that weighs

like a rock in your grave

meant to keep you from rising

and blow it off like dust.

Come down on yourself like a meteor

and begin a new species of life

among the bones of the dinosaurs.

Get lost in this desert of stars

like the Rosetta Stone

of a new language of scars

no one’s ever spoken before

around a fire in the night

and be the first word of your own light

to give names to things in the garden.

The happy genius of your own beginnings.

How many nights must pass?

How many days?

How many full moons wane

and ice ages come and go

and trees turn into grasslands

and continents shatter like skulls

that grind their teeth in the night

before you finally let go

and begin.

Mercury had wings on his heels

when he took off on the wind

but look at you

standing there

at the edge of the world

with parachutes on your shoes

like a medium without a message.

Take them off.

Go barefoot over the stars of your firewalk like water.

Take off that used straitjacket

you bought at the Salvation Army

like the larva of a dragonfly

looking for a hand-me-down chrysalis on the cheap.

You can’t read your fate like dna

in another man’s fortune-cookie.

And there’s already enough sky around us

for everyone to share

like a planetary cocoon

without anyone running out of room

for worms to turn into butterflies

wolves into whales

raptors into birds with feathers and scales.

Where things end is where they begin.

They’re Siamese twins

you can’t separate like a loveletter

into before and after

because they’ve only got

the one birth

the one breath

between them both

and the same is true of their death.

So if you’re already over before you begin

why hesitate?

What have you got to lose

when there’s nothing to choose

between lying in wait like yesterday

for what you think you know

will come along in its own good time

and what you can’t anticipate

that comes up on you from behind

like eyes to the blind in a dream

and says it’s later than it seems.

Where have you been?

You’re on in the next scene

right after the death of the old queen.

Let the lines memorize you for a change.

Friends fall apart

when they stop being strangers to one another.

Babies stop turning solitude into single mothers.

You can gnaw on the bone of the known for years

to get down to the marrow of things

and still not be satisfied when you do

and then the hunger you never taught to hunt

begins to eat you.

So jump.

Like a fish in a still pond.

Like a frog from a lilypad.

Go mad.

Go ballistic.

Go beyond that place

where even to say you’re lost in space

doesn’t make any sense

and nothing’s ever moved in a straight line

that wasn’t a special form of a curve.

Why wait for the apocalypse

to come down on you like an old rafter

that breaks with every firecracker that goes off

when your own explosive potential

makes that look like a firefly with a wet fuse?

How long have you lepered your stars in the sun

or your constellation paled in the dawn

like a tattoo you had taken off your arm

like an old love affair that’s over and gone?

Live on.

Jump from the top stair.

Slide down the bannister

in the opposite direction

like a double helix

in the southern hemisphere.

Do something

you can get away with

that stays true to your disobedience

like evolution.

Draw a line in the sand

then overstep the bounds

like a crosswind that wipes it out.

The measure of a human is a human

without a forwarding address

that can find its way back

like an abandoned cat

to the threshold and doorway

of our homelessness

where we left like a loveletter to the world

that returns unread

with nothing to say

that would have made any difference anyway.

A phoenix might be born in fire

but it doesn’t nest in the flames.

You can’t keep what you won’t give away

so if you want to stay here

like a chameleon in front of a mirror

that likes to reflect things as they change

you have to do it like air

and grow wings.

You have to become a dragon.

Or a snake who knows

how to rise above things

like an eagle or a sea on the moon

that got caught like a fish out of water

in the first and last crescents of its own talons.

Don’t let yourself be tossed around

like an overturned lifeboat

that set out to rescue you

from the undertow of reality

and got swept off its own feet

before they could turn into oars.

Don’t be a shore-hugger

on the dunes of your own mindstream.

Go along with the flow

like the oxygen in your blood

that was conceived in a fire-womb

in the belly of a star

in outer space

and then took a meteor to this place

where it’s bagged by your lungs

and rushed to your face

like a lip transplant for a kissing-stone.

Just as every question is the prelude of the answer

so every prayer for direction

is the direction of prayer.

The Kaaba waits like a pilgrim

for the first crescent of the moon

to circumambulate you

in all directions at once

and in all months of the year

like the sun through the zodiac

when it shines at midnight

and the sky is unusually clear.

The mystery of life

that seeks you out

like its best guess at everything

is just that

is just this

a mystery

not a secret waiting to be told

like a baby without a name

that’s grown post-mature

and gummy in the womb

like matter in the matrix of being.

And when things let go of the green bough

like the singing bird in your heart

or a windfall of silver apples

shaken from a dead branch by the wind

when the moon goes down over the hills

and all that’s left of the view

is two elbows on a worn-out windowsill

watching things return to themselves for the night

like stars and dust and dew

and love when it’s over

tastes autumn on its breath

like long sad thoughts of last September

that always seem to end in death and sorrow

it helps to remember

the seeds in the green apples of spring

that are buried in their birth

as if there could never be a tomorrow

that wouldn’t open their small sad eyes

like fireflies in the orchards of earth

that age like the truth

in a purple passage

on the second to last page

they burn through falling asleep

thinking of things to come

as if each were either a lighthouse

or the evening star in the morning

or a tiny Armageddon in a mason jar

as big and bright as the universe

that goes off without warning

everywhere all the time.

PATRICK WHITE