THREE FLAMES, MY GOLDFISH DANCING LIKE STARS

THREE FLAMES, MY GOLDFISH DANCING LIKE STARS

Three flames, my goldfish dancing like stars

in a telescopic lens with a narrow field of view.

Eerie slate blue in the blank windows

across the street, as if they once had eyes.

Blind prophets in the dawn. What do they see?

One poet on nightwatch sitting in an apartment

by himself with the lights out, listening

to what the silence has to say about everything,

nothing, the way the sky is beginning

to keep its stars to itself as if

the great liberties of shining

they took with the night are practising

the greater discretion of candle wicks

that someone lights up and someone blows out

and they end up bending back on themselves

like solar flares, or ingrown hairs,

or tiny black monks concealed under the cowls

of this holy hour like shadows of noon in the sun.

All the deep, soul-searching questions

make peace with all the elusive answers

they’ve been searching for like a battered bird

the eye of a storm. And the lies of life prove

vastly less intriguing than its truths.

Every firefly of insight, a dragon breathing

in the distance, exhaling chimney sparks

like a furnace in a dream talking in its sleep.

Plumes of smoke dissipating in the air

from the fumaroles of gentle exorcisms,

ghosts trying to get back to their graves

before the day starts to take itself too seriously.

The numinous aftertaste of all the afterlives

I wanted to live in my mouth, one’s as good

as another, and I’m beginning to exalt

a little in living this one as a creative endeavour

that’s been trying to achieve me all along,

not the other way around. At least

it amuses me to think so though I’m not expecting

a masterpiece. The same eye by which

I see the star is the eye by which the star sees me.

Interdependent origination. Cosmic intimacy.

All these broken mirrors that have given birth to my face.

All these Cepheid variables drumming on the hide

they tanned from my heart like the pulse

of an enraptured ghost dance around a blazing fire.

Listen to one solitary night bird and you can hear

the whole choir singing backup to the human condition.

Compassion is the sweetest sadness when the stars

bend down to kiss the burn like a sunspot

soothing its feet in the lunar shadows of the mindstream

on a long firewalk across the cool sands of a new moonrise

over the Sea of Tranquillity. Why walk

when you can row your way across or fly

like a waterbird through the skies of a million eyes at once?

Mark one jewel and they’re all marked for life.

Whisper to the willows in starlight

and you can hear the booming of the abysmal echo

on the far side of the universe like life in a small town.

When life isn’t copulating in the brothels

of a false dawn, it’s the prelude of a longing

to impart your heart to someone like a secret

you couldn’t reveal to anyone else like a humming bird

that’s caught the ear of the holly hocks.

You enter the dream without knowing

what you’re going to wake up to.

The empty silo keeps the hunger alive.

It’s the full harvest that blows the candle out

beside your death bed. Fulfilments of failure.

No one’s a sailor until they’ve drowned

running aground on the lunar reefs

of an enchanted island you washed up on

like a lost cause doomed to be found in the morning

like the guiding light of a dead starfish

still shining out of habit in a dawn that pales

by comparison when a sorceress sets her easel

up on the beach and begins to sketch

a starmap of you that’s an exact likeness

of the vision you had of her just before you died.

There’s always another side to a black hole.

Turn the emptiness of the hourglass over

like a drink you’ve finished crossing the bar

and it’s a different world with different stars.

PATRICK WHITE