VENUS IN THE WEST, ALWAYS A GOOD SIGN
Venus in the west, always a good sign.
And the night temperate. The balm of
the air,
herbal, cool bracken in the shadows,
the flowers stepping back out of the
light
as they pack up their circus tents
like clowns and dancers after the show
and move on to who knows what
underworld
of root fires in the eyes of the Lord
of Jewels?
Why is it the wind always seems crueler
to the pines? Lachrymal glands of
dolorous amber.
Hard honey. Broken horns. Is it because
they endure their own ennobling by
standing
up to things like the skeletal remains
of evergreens?
Venus and Leo blossom on a dead branch.
Influenced by birth under Virgo putting
a good face
on a harem of moon goddesses, I’ve
never
been able to tell when I look at Spica,
that
stalk of wheat burning in her hand,
whether
I was raised in a temple or the back of
a sacred brothel.
An obstreperous boy among so many
women.
You can tell by the way I revere the
willows
down by the Tay they’ve had a lasting
effect upon me
though remembering yesterday as though
tomorrow hadn’t happened yet, how
seldom it seemed
I could ever get them to stop crying as
if
love always had a hole in it somewhere
they were leaking out of like escapee
waterclocks
squeezed like glaciers out of the
rocks,
antediluvian diamonds in tears, and me
just beginning to fire up the Hadean
darkness
with stars of my own. There was always
the silent taboo of a secret I wasn’t
privy to,
a mystery to life too big to fit like
the sea in my ear
as I walked away back to room, thinking
I’ll never be holy enough to overcome
death,
but who knows how much of what’s
demonically estranged about me might be
esteemed
if I could deepen the shadows to
enhance their lights
and alleviate even a single chandelier
of sorrow
the way I used to delight in
discovering
new, unpicked blackberry patches that
were ripe
and bleeding from the eyes like the
visionary stigmata
of an infernally compassionate wine you
drank from a skull.
PATRICK WHITE
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