LETTING THE STARS FROM LAST NIGHT

LETTING THE STARS FROM LAST NIGHT

Letting the stars from last night

settle in this morning’s puddles

so I can see more clearly once

this turmoil of starmud precipitates out

as mental sediment in a mirror

skybound to a vast blue abyss

and, as they say in Zen, the eternal sky

does not inhibit the flight of the white clouds.

I want to be a bird that dissipates

in the mauve distance like water in the air.

I want to be a fire whose flames

never stop aspiring to the stars,

though every time they’re almost within grasp

they disappear like petals on the wind,

the pages fall out of the book I’m burning

like a sacrificial rose of galactic hydrogen,

and I’m left with a handful of ash

I can stuff my pillow with like the down

of a phoenix in the urn of his worst nightmare.

And being strong seldom helps.

Or feathering your dragons

to convince yourself they’re bluebirds.

Strong means condemned to solitude.

Hanging on to the mountain with one arm

to keep it from falling to its death

in the valley it dug like its own grave

in the valley below. Biting the bullet

like a crystal skull until your back molars break

and you’re swallowing little flakes of glass

like the beginning of a snow squall

even as you’re smiling like a grimace

on a death mask trying to hold its tears back

like a glacier trying to discipline the mindstream.

Strong means you don’t use the fossils of other birds

as crutches for your lapwings. Your calender of scars

begins to smile more affectionately at you

as you get older like waxing crescent moons

and this avalanche of meteoric life

looks more like a windfall of ore and apples

with seeds like snake-eyed dice inside

or the seven come eleven of a coal mine

that finally clarified its darkness like diamonds.

When bad news comes you fall on it

like a hand grenade in a daycare center

as you strain to keep yourself together.

Strong means being taken for granted

like the solid cornerstone that can take the weight

of the world that towers above it like quicksand.

Strong means you don’t hesitate to eliminate

your distinctions when someone’s drowning,

whether they’re a fly in a toilet bowl,

Icarus falling out of the sky because his wings

were insincere, Narcissus plunging into his face,

or a siren caught up in the undertow of her song,

you show up like a lifeboat with a lighthouse

full of fireflies for a lantern, words for a rudder

and a star to set sail by and pull everyone in

to your emptiness, happy you’ve finally found a use for it.

A holy book says that no one’s asked to bear

more than they can carry, and it’s probably true

from one direction of prayer, but I swear, lately,

one camel isn’t enough to shoulder what

it’s going to take a caravan on the moon to walk

this cargo of heavy metals to a nuclear dump site

to the dark side where it’s always midnight at noon.

One moment there are funeral bells dissolved in the rain

like sugar-cubes of acid in a wishing well

and the next, a spear of insight penetrates my heart

and I can’ t tell if it’s a pin meant for a butterfly

or a voodoo doll, or as a dance floor for the angels

to learn how to waltz without bumping into each other

like Canada geese taking off from a trashed corn field

as if they needed an air traffic controller and a runway

to bear the souls of the dead west and south

as I begin to wonder if death really is too pricey a ticket

to unload all these camels of their burdens

like sacs of genetically modified bee pollen

I’ve gathered radioactively from the starfields

so it doesn’t derange the hive or taint its honey and flowers,

and travelling lighter than life, go with them.

Yet I know I won’t because my heart’s

mortared into my Mongol blood like a brick

in the Temple of Life at Samarkand

and I would think of it as genocide

to kill even so much as a single human

who’s ever stood nightwatch in a crow’s nest

for a fleet sailing into a divine wind.

Sooner or later I’ll be washed up

on the event horizon of another black hole

at the center of a galactic starfish

all my lucidities will stick to like myriad universes

nacreously gathering their pearls

like planets and new moons out of the nebulosity

of these lunar sandstorms whipping my eyes

with the radiance of a hundred billion burning stars

that get thrown in my wounds to cauterize

the scream of my fountainmouth hemorrhaging

in the dead silence I keep like a vow to myself

not to shriek out in pain at the arrows

that strike the hearts of the clear-eyed hawks in autumn.

PATRICK WHITE