NO GRAVEGOODS IN MY SOLITUDE

NO GRAVEGOODS IN MY SOLITUDE

No gravegoods in my solitude, no trinkets

from any spiritual world inside or outside this one.

The totem belongs to the dream that’s buried with it

as the flower’s engendered by the root it’s taken from.

Mind is matter. Matter is mind. And it isn’t as if

one is blind to the other because one shore

isn’t parted from the other by the flowing

of the mindstream in between. Try to separate

the reflection of the moon from water in a dream state.

The moon is a characteristic of water as the water

is a feature of the moon. If you want to mediate

until you turn the vertebrae of your spine into a bridge

to get to the other side of a life you’re already standing on,

that’s ok as long as it’s burning. Otherwise it’s just going

to obstruct your path when you’re shooting the rapids

of the Milky Way like your own spring run off

trying to saddle a rush of stars with a rudderless liferaft

and oars for spurs. Better to be a waterbird

with wings of your own, but what a thrill

to ride the snake until you can fly like a dragon

among the stars like Alcor and Mizar, the horse and the rider,

in the handle of the Big Dipper like a warrior Bedouin

testing his eyes on the dune of a tribal hourglass to see

if he can tell what hour it is by the dance of a distant binary.

It’s getting late. Nightwatch at the well. The town

unpeopled by sleep. A choir of train whistles

practising their inquisitive requiems at every crossing

like Canada geese migrating south when the autumn stars arise.

More lonely than mournful, I can taste the shadows

in the honey of life as readily as the light. I can smell

the fragrance of time like the first snowflakes

in a lover’s hair, trying to turn her into a constellation

to sweeten the night air. And even in the ashes

of the starmaps the shining sets afire

and scatters like a library in the urn of the heart

on a wind that carries away the passions of this art

of exhuming more life out of a shallow grave than went into it,

I can still burn in the dark like the ore

of undisciplined diamonds. I can still squander my light

on the eyelids of the fallen flowers like a final kiss farewell.

Time wastes a death on me. Years ago the wind arose

and blew that candle out in the open window

of an abandoned house and ever since I’ve been

drifting like a ghost of smoke in a diaspora of stars.

I bequeath to the rose, the blood of my wounds.

To the thorns of the moon, my scars. To the night

I leave my eyes. To the wind, my breath. My voice

to the nightbird whose longing put my lyrics

to the picture-music that’s haunted me all my life

like the song of someone who loved me once

before I was born and began to forget. But my heart

that I could judge the worth of like a bell bound to the earth,

or a feather of fire in hell, in the palm of my hand,

I give that to everyone like the windfall of a tree in a storm.

Black walnuts and wild apples. Solar systems

of peaches and pears in the leftover orchards

of organic gardens bearing the fruit of a habitable planet

at the autumn equinox of the New England asters

and modest suns of the Jerusalem artichokes

for the birds and the squirrels and the bears.

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

and it’s no good to you in a grave when it comes time

to throw yourself overboard to stay afloat

and weather the squalls on your own sea of awareness

like an empty moonboat drifting through the fog

calling out to anyone who’ll listen on the coast

of a new universe that discovers you like Atlantis

to a ghost of the old world looking for a passage

back to the more familiar labyrinth of home.

Liberation is freedom through creative form, not from it.

Liberation is life. And life is all entrance, no exit.

And you weren’t asked at the door for any i.d.

And no one’s going to stop you from lowering the fire escape

to get away from yourself. And if you were to ask

the mirrors of your own awareness, they’d stop staring at you

as if they’d never seen a new world savage before.

Everyone’s going to leave an empty chair at the table

sooner or later. Like the skull cup of the moon

you’ve got to pour your prophetic lees out upon the earth

if you want to give your abundance another chance.

You can make lanterns out of fireflies in canning jars

or you can abandon them to the spiders

in the corners of your eyes like dreamcatchers and kites,

but if you want to shine of your own accord,

albino fish in the darkest depths with stars in their eyes,

you’ve got to see the sun flowering at midnight,

you’ve got to greet Venus in the Pleiades at dawn.

You’ve got to unsilver the mirror like a stripper

until you disappear like a bird in the house of life

through an open window like a crack in a cosmic egg

to feel the vastness of the sky that transcends

the limit of your wings. Despite the eye-witness

in the mirror, where time is always in arrears to eternity,

you’ve got to give it all up like your shining reflection

if you want to stay here for your own protection.

PATRICK WHITE