NOT TO BE WITH YOU

Not to be with you,

not to know your breathing beside me,

not to be able to put my arms around you

and kiss the black candles away,

change skies with a glance,

feel your mystery seeping into me

like a veil of rain,

my heart a hive of stars,

my body crazed

by a fragrance of the moon,

to feel the intimate moment hang

like a drop of dew

poised like the silence that falls before it;

is a mountain peering down into its own valley

at a whisper of cloud

that passes like a secret,

a red carpet of blood that wants to fly

laid out for an unknown dignitary.

You are not here

but I walk with you alone

under the smudged moonlight,

through the tidal shadows of soft, ebbing trees,

and gusts of warm air touch me like your skin,

and the assent in your eyes

is a colour only the heart can see,

and my longing is a map to anywhere

my mouth might meet yours,

and my hands visit the shrines of your body

like pilgrims full of reverence

for an infidel religion

with beautiful eyes,

with sacred scars and a language

that is born along

with the serpent fire of my ripening passion

to annihilate myself in your doorway,

to unspool the river

in the supple coral of your water-rose,

the keel of my tongue

circumnavigating your startled equators,

and all your tender meridians

bowstrings taut with anticipation

of electric arrows released in ecstasy,

both of us wounded by insatiable joy

in a storm of mushrooms and black cherries,

in the oceanic hunger of the sea

for an oracular island of forbidden frenzies,

for mystic releases

that free oblivion from servitude

and teach the chains of existence

to dance to the music

of their own liberation,

their own falling away like rain,

that the true ground of their being

was always the wind

that binds the message to the world

in the arms of lovers creating each other

from black palettes in the darkness,

from moss and apricots,

from the long wharves

of interminable kisses

that gore like the horns of garden snails,

from the fountain-mouths of ancient eclipses,

the dark abundance

of the feast that is received like eyes

and the night chutes that open nocturnal poppies

like auroras of furious sugar

to squander the stars

in the throats of jubilant black holes,

to appease the unattainable

with the inexhaustible satiation of gratified silos.

Not to be with you,

my wings ache with urgent migrations,

and I am as impetuous as a sword

in the foundries of my blood,

and my voice

is the remote thunder of humbled apples,

and my dragons swarm

the abyss of your beauty

like shepherd moons, sunspots,

a calendar of desires

that marks every phase of your body off

as an apostate holiday,

the omen that winnows

a harvest of bells.

Not to be with you is a cloak

that weighs more than the night sky,

the eyelid of an iron rose,

a feather of lead

that drowns in its own reflection

like the shadow of a flightless longing,

the unquenchable silence

of a well on the moon

listening for rain.

PATRICK WHITE