YOU HAVE TO SEE WITH YOUR HEART INTO THE NATURE OF LIFE

YOU HAVE TO SEE WITH YOUR HEART INTO THE NATURE OF LIFE

You have to see with your heart into the nature of life.

Your eyes will only get you as far as the front porch.

Like a moth drawn to the light. Mesmerized by the brightness

but not shining by a light of your own. Crazy moth,

no one’s ever wrong it’s just a matter of degree, not

kind of right you want to be, the kind that’s blinded

by the dazzle of the radiance of your own blazing eyebeams

or the subtler moonrise of the longings that overwhelm you

with the haunting sadness of the unanswered nightbirds

that keep calling out to the stars as you do

like the ghost of a candle at a seance that’s gone out

so you can see better into the unknown darkness

that is as much behind you as it is ahead. Even

these blue-blooded words bleeding like the eyes of peasants

down this page, toys in the hands of the dead they’re buried with

deep in the past and not the Rameseum of royal magnificence

we built to last significantly like the starpath of a zodiac

yesterday walks on the plank of a straight and narrow tomorrow

for following its own mindstream through this life

of half-lights and shadows, the blue-greys and phantom greens

of the irises that beatify our pupils with the moondogs

of non-denominational, alla prima haloes around the blackholes

the visionaries among us who merely dream

keep pearl diving into like starfish reaching out

for the singularity of love on the bottom that makes them feel

as if they were resurfacing with it in another world

the same as this one, but unrecognized like a star

a dimension ahead of its light as everything passes into future.

Until you feel the lightning root in you like dendritic black matter

you transplanted in exile like a flower you brought from home

you’ll never see your own reflection in the black mirror

that shines brighter and deeper than the white one

that pales like the world in comparison with the dawn

of the sun that shines from within you at midnight.

Until you stop mistaking fireflies along the coasts

of consciousness for lighthouses you can navigate by

by letting the lifeboat on the shipwreck of life

you’re clinging to like a wooden mermaid at the bowsprit

take your height above the horizon for the right ascension

and declination of the interspatial, non-temporal direction

you’re turning into like a headwind without a sail,

you’ll always feel like a cult of pleading seagulls

winging it in suspended animation in the wake

of the rest of your life while the foghorns bellow

Jurassically in the tarpits of an alien shepherd moon.

And I won’t blame you if you don’t understand

what all these metaphors are trying so hard not to mean

as a way of leaving the door open for the light to get out

of that aviary you cover every night with an executioner’s hood

as if you were judging your voice by the imperfectible standards

of the lyrics you have yet sing on the green boughs

and dead branches of life that’s always making a comeback

like a has-been instead of swinging back and forth

like a trapeze artist afraid of heights on your perch

as you do when you come before me like a water sylph

acting as if you were some kind of pendulous, grandmother clock,

tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, the dust on the windowsill

and you bored to death like a comet portending

you’re just another dead goldfish in a huge hourglass

of quicksand. Don’t let the panic of being young

dominate any stage of your life you’re on tour with at the moment.

And don’t insult me by thanking me for something

I haven’t given you. Everything’s of equal value

when you’re free to be as worthless as you please.

PATRICK WHITE