IT ISN’T THAT I’M LOOKING

It isn’t that I’m looking for eagles in a barnyard

or a phoenix in a match-head

when I observe

by the number of wrecks on the rocks

how few lighthouses there are these days

among so many flashlights.

What can the hair say about the horn

or the feather teach the wind

or quicksand preach

for the edification of the cornerstone?

And must I put a healthy leg

at the service of a broken crutch

to limp along with the mob

at the end of a dying culture

that insists that all roads end

in a cult of cripples?

If I’m walking alone to the stars

on a pilgrimage of one

finding my way in the going,

my heart aligned like the needle of a compass

to a darkness brighter than the light,

and the only map the clarity of my eyes,

why should those

who weep in their ashes like rain,

trying to put glasses on a fly,

who have never dipped

the thorn of the moon

in the night of their blood

and written a love poem

to a skull in a desert,

care if I want to roam

in the hills and valleys of myself

like some homeless shepherd of the wind

taking the stone of the earth for a pillow to dream on

in the high grasslands

where the stars walk

whispering eternal intimacies like black swans

barging the ores of a vacant throne

through my bloodstream,

as all along the shores of my flowing

ancient flowers wake mysteriously

like candles in an eclipse?

If I take the sky for the walls of my house

and leave the rest

like an autumn of junkmail

looking for a door and a last known address,

if I choose not to contrive a world

to accommodate my absence

in the available dimension of the future,

wiping my shadows and ghosts

like mirrors off at the threshold,

even letting go of the door

to enter empty-handed

as the applause

for an understudy of the dawn

that never got over its stage-fright

in the abyss of an abandoned theater,

happy to let the river pan itself for gold,

not laying a claim to anything,

making sure the gate-latch

clamps down like a dog on a bone

when I close it up

like a straitjacket in its own thoughts,

not stringing my spinal court to a wishbone

or the warped neck

of an obvious guitar,

but taking my voice with me

like a wounded bird in my hands,

a star struck from a stone,

moonlight in an empty boat,

the taste of silence

in the mouth of a mask,

my name a rainmark

on the eyelid of a dusty bell

I’ve left to the dream it keeps returning to;

why should it matter to anyone

who lies to the bleeding door

that is wounded by their entrance

everytime they say it’s just me

as if a pillar answered?

I can’t find anything

less than everything to call a self

and there are no mirrors

in an abyss more naked than the sky

to consult like the oracular flights of words

that litter the windowsill of this seeing

like flies that spent themselves,

flints on an empty lighter,

wicks on a glass candle,

consuming the ferocity

of their lives against the illusion of the world outside

they brain themselves against again and again

like small meteors

doused like torches in the eye

of the upper atmosphere

just above the open window.

When everything is absurd as this,

and even the tuning forks of the rain

are an era off in their pitch,

and music is merely

the coming and going of ants

in an abandoned syrinx,

and the drum of the heart alone

isn’t enough to start a band,

and the only melody

is a road the wind blew away

like a hair off the shoulder of the night,

and everyone’s trying

to unmarrow the moon like a fortune-cookie,

and every snowflake in the furnace

of this dark fire

thinks it dies like a galaxy

when it’s only an inflection of tears,

am I not free to walk in harmony

with the savage senselessness of it all,

without hanging a bell of advice over my head

like the only corpse

on an island full of gravediggers

who can’t get out of the holes they’ve dug

to bury me in?

I don’t want to live waiting for yesterday

like the light of a star

that’s already gone,

or dream like a seed of constellations to come

like a roll of the dice,

or watch the surplus of your smile

rotting on the docks of a famine.

And don’t think these harvests I leave you

like a trail of breadcrumbs and dead flies

out of this wilderness of thought

are any more than stars

caught in the throat of the labyrinth

that follows itself like a snake with its tail in its mouth,

trying to find a way out of itself

by eating its own head.

And by some chance

if you ever make it out this far,

I’ve mailed back

the same map of fireflies

with its legend of smoke,

three lifetimes a lightyear,

you once handed me to find you

and marked every place I’m not

with a black hole.

PATRICK WHITE