LIE TO ME, IF YOU MUST, I'LL BE YOUR CULT OF ONE

LIE TO ME, IF YOU MUST, I’ll BE YOUR CULT OF ONE

Lie to me, if you must, I’ll be your cult of one.

If there’s a darkness you want to lead me into,

a coven of night, a blackhole where you hide your light,

I’ll be Arcturus in the crowns of the black walnut trees.

I’ll follow you down into the underworld, a gibbering shade,

And I won’t look back, I won’t loop retrograde

when you overtake me like a planet on the inside track.

Draw me a starmap. I’ll be whatever configurations of shining

you want me to be, the bestiary of a different kind of zodiac,

and you be the black I’m embedded in and let death

assess the value of the jewels of insight I bring you

like the bituminous eyes of all the snowmen I’ve ever been

intensified into diamonds that will thaw whenever you weep

for reasons you can tell me or not as you please.

Talk to me in your sleep, or write a note for me when you wake

and I’ll hang on every word like a waterdrop

on a blade of blossoming stargrass, or a poet

with his head in a noose hanging like a pendant from your neck

and I promise never to reproach your silence

like a misdiagnosed disease suffering the symptoms of a cure.

I’ll be your dirty old man and you can pretend

you’re the pure embodiment of lust in a nun’s habit,

and I’ll keep my word to the blood oaths and vows,

taboos and alibis we make for the both of us

like the sword that lies between us like the hour hand

of an alarm clock with a snooze button

like a dozy nightwatchman that looks the other way

whenever you want to avail yourself of a pagan afterlife

in a goose-down duvet. Tell me who you dream of being

and I’ll get behind you like a mirror of your shadow

and I swear I’ll never blind you with my blazing

like the legends of the false dawns I once aspired to,

a mirage that wept real tears witching for water,

the ghost of a dolphin in an ocean of maritime stars.

I won’t ask you to enter my solitude without

a wet suit on, or immediate access to a space-station,

or explain my crazy-wisdom to us both as if

you had an anti-venom you milked from the fangs

of the moon that could heal the blessings

of my snake-bit prophetic skull like the eyes

of the dice I roll like the unlucky bones of the skeletal key

that keeps a lock on my heart like the pit of an apricot

until some muse of the autumn lifts my spirit

like a curfew in a half-way house for recovering poets

and there are more unrehabilitated exits in the freedom of my art

than farewells in the tone of the doorbells at the entrance.

PATRICK WHITE