MORE DIRECTLY, MORE INTIMATELY

MORE DIRECTLY, MORE INTIMATELY

More directly, more intimately I would approach you

with fingertips and lips, with the black roses of mysterious midnights,

with eloquent eyes full of solace and tenderness, forgotten tears,

and the leaves of our ancient longing shed like a library in the ripening silence

of the moment just before the universe is born of an unwitnessed union

and arrayed like the robes we have discarded

of as many forelives as there are

stars in the sky and gardens in orbit. Breath of my breath, how often

over the ages have I lingered in this dream of you, waking

from shrine after shrine like a swallow to find you again, the sacred syllable

of the jewel in the well, lunar sapphire, unsayable to all but the one

who has looked far beyond his seeing to retrieve it

from the welter and turmoil of the world like a second innocence? Beloved,

you have always been the firefly in my grave, the lost star

that answered what the darkness was asking,

a sunflower in the shadow of an eclipse, a ghost-song

rising inconceivably from the ashes of the guitar

like the first morning of a leaf. Together

we have lived forever in the tiniest house of time, over and over,

like a drumbeat or the beating of single heart, two wings on the same bird,

renewing and fulfilling each other, gathering and releasing,

the river in rain, bathing in its own waters, arrivals in every departure.

Soft fire, fire on the moon, blood-fire, mind-fire, mystic fire,

sweet arsonist, white heretic, you heal in your burning,

your beauty, golden knives of light that adorn the heart they strike,

even over coffee, even over distant glimpses of you

on the other side of the street, even here now, miles

and hours away among these voids and apparitions I keep searching

like abandoned theaters for the word within the word to tell you

what the world is, what we are with you in it, not just

the green bells of April annunciations, or the sanguine avowals of passion

downing the bitter cup on a hill of skulls

or the amazing resurrections, or the sun in your hair

suddenly a revelry of light, or the star in the bay of your smile, first crescent

threshing the harvest of sunset, not just that, not just

black lightning slaking its igneous roots in underground watersheds,

volcanoes spewing virgin islands for sexual castaways, but the things

I once whispered to you in a thousand languages

that have long been rubbled in the mouths of men like temples,

things I once said to you like the wind shining in moonlight

when we lay down secretly by the banks of the Orontes

far from anything but the shelter of ourselves,

obedient in that ancient future to nothing but time and the stars

as civilizations passed, talking to their gods. Slowly

like an empty boat drifting through the fog

it all returns, the many lives, the many blossoms returning to the branch,

and all the windfall of faces assumed by the flesh and the spirit,

fruit on the tree of the moon again, eyelids and mouths again,

and the many hearts that have lain like silver coins ungathered

in the fountains of yearning that flowed away from us

into clouds on the mountain just as we reached out,

and all the dreams in the cellars of blood we pulled over ourselves like skies

where we wandered in the far fields among the flowering fires,

two planets of bliss on a single thread of blood, the stars

beneath our feet and siloes of silence our only bread, too full to speak,

too vagrantly sustained by a feast of wonder to lack anything.

Tomorrows ago, then as now, all one encounter, one greeting,

we are mountain and valley and the echo of the calling as again and again

you incredibly answer like a beautiful wilderness, supernal spring,

the origin in my end. O you who are my only passage and threshold,

let me sing to you again of your alphas and omegas

on the bull-harps of the moon, let me send messengers on ahead

centuries from now to celebrate your astounding arrivals

on the shores of all these unborn lives, future after future, wave after wave,

the days and dawns of our walking from oasis to oasis, island to island

in this desert of stars. Let me drink gold from the rock,

honey from the bone, wine from the thistle; wise, let me drink

from the hands of a fool; foolish, drown me in a prophet’s tears;

ignorant or enlightened, madman or sage alike, let me

see you again under the eyelids of the moon, let me brush the hair

from your forehead and kiss you again like cool apples in September,

one orchard after another, wild grapes in the grass.

In the silver of faceless mirrors I would write your name,

on the waters of unnamed lakes I would reflect your face.

Ghetto rose, orchid in a slum, let my sorrows rinse your leaves,

let me fall like rain to the root and rise again through the petals of your ocean,

let me fill your glass and be consumed once more

on the precipice of your lips so might I be your wine and water,

this trance of flowing diamonds. And of my joys remembered and to come,

let the greatest and smallest of my palaces and hovels

hold you for the night in rooms with eyes for windows,

my body for a bed, and my love of you that makes a candle

and a shadow of the world, this lighthouse off the watchful coast

of your epiphanies, where my heart is a solitary seabird,

a sample of land from an undiscovered continent, the light behind the light

you go by. Gentle gypsy-witch, bright voyager, again

I have found you like a needle, mystic north, your star,

your steady lucidity, the calm Pacific under your shining, within and without,

direction and retrieval, a radiance that shakes the grave

of its disembodied contents and hands out living passports

in the cities of the dead to ports of call

among the lost islands of light in your eyes, greener than music.

PATRICK WHITE