YOU FOUND ME WANTING AND YOU LEFT

YOU FOUND ME WANTING AND YOU LEFT

You found me wanting and you left

and the sea wept in me in the bay of my arms

like the new moon in the old as if

all the sorrows of the world were gathered there

and I didn’t know what to pray for anymore

as my tears turned red as the blood

of a hemorrhaging rose and the sundials

circled like the shadows of sharks in the water.

I lived in an oyster shell with a razor smile

like a disappointment to the moon, trying

in secret to turn my agony into black pearls

of occult wisdom that might retrieve the stars

we once walked under from the black hole

of love I fell into like a grave of light

I had to arise from on the other side, night

after night, my eyes in the rags of the mirages

I clung to as if that were the only skin I had left

in the desert cold of the moon after earthset.

Hurt? Destroyed? Did the rain crack like my tears

in the desiccated creekbeds of my starmud

trying to read their own lifelines in the deltas

of my eyes where they entered the void

and in the hieroglyphics that slashed my lips

like the wrecked cartouches of an heretical pharaoh

who had worshipped you alone as if the sun

had a feminine gender for anyone who travelled by night?

The worst fire in hell is the one that goes out on its own

like a curse that doesn’t make a difference

to the way you feel though you’ve mastered

this discipline of fire you kindled

with the arrows that longed for you

like the shadows of birds for a bow of moonlight

that stung like my fingertips for ever

having strung it with my spinal cord

like a guitar whipping its one good eye

like a soloist flagellating himself with the music

he used to play for you when you were

upstairs asleep, in the key of your dreams,

as if I could feather you in the most

incomparable nightskies you’ve ever

disappeared into like a fragrance of stars

from the rootfires of the wild asters you left in ashes.

Been a long time since the wind whistled

through the locust trees like a harmonica of thorns,

and the light etched albino ferns of ice on the windows.

The wound of your absence deepened my imagination

like a valley of death I had to firewalk through

like a scapegoat I drove out of myself

into a wilderness that was more about temptation

than atonement for anything I hadn’t done.

We may have separated like a wishbone

where the sacred rivers join the conversation

around the council of the three fires, wishing

each other the best we were capable of asking for,

though I was the one who came up short

like a strawman on a pyre to scare the crows

out of the starwheat, and you were as sure

as Spica in Virgo you were making all the right moves,

to fill your hollow silos with the staff of a new life

shy of my dark abundance illuminating

your bright vacancy by water-gilding your tears

with gold at the end of a moondog instead of a rainbow.

I tried to indulge you like the luxury

of a new beginning I couldn’t afford.

It’s hard to assess what might be of value

to someone when you’re always lavishing them

with the inestimable. I thought the stars

were more than enough but you wanted

diamonds for windows and sapphires for eyes

and all I had to offer in lieu of the real thing

were fractured telescopes of the way I saw the world.

PATRICK WHITE