PRECIPITATE WOMAN, STAR SAPPHIRE

PRECIPITATE WOMAN, STAR SAPPHIRE

Precipitate woman, star sapphire, crystal elixir

distilled from the nebularity of your saddest disguises

when your eyes weep like lonely windows

from your doe-skin medicine bag. Is your heart bad

or just bruised? Fire-sylph languishing in the ashes

of your deepest desire, or disappointment taken

by surprise you’d have to sink bells deeper

than you have to sing like a drowned mermaid

to the lovers you left dog-paddling in your wake

still in denial you didn’t swim back to rescue them?

Male. I am. Fool? Only by my own hand. Born

to succumb to the female principle of the world

I’ve built no temples in my honour beyond

the occasional gravestone to mark the miles

I’ve endured this dream of mine to love

and be loved, though you can’t say that without

feeling kind of hokey, nevertheless, it’s a doorway

to a good guess. I’m an unsigned loveletter

without a return address, sealed in blood and roses

and a harvest of thorns in eclipse I threshed

with my heart like a matador tearing his cape

on the horns of the moon because only

by their fruits can you know them like wine

trashed in the sands of an hourglass that smashes

like the Pleiades against the skull of Taurus.

I’ve been watching your eyes lie for hours now

as they had to without harming anyone, from

the other side of the room and I know you’re dangerous.

You know how to keep the dead in their graves

and somehow make them feel relieved about it

as if their lightning wasn’t up to the storm

though you were amused by the way they thundered

like a distant windfall of ghost dancers at dawn.

I was many lightyears out at sea before

a pink morning warned me I was out of my depths

as the waves rose and fell like the breasts

of a woman sleeping beside me oceanically

on the moon, her hair like a willow on the edge

of a precipice where lovers leapt to their deaths

as the lesser of two consummations of suffering.

I see the infernality of your avatar in an orphanage

of forlorn voodoo dolls, and the mistrust

of your longing to traffic in lust for the sake

of a taste of love that might still blossom

in the heart of the apple that fell to the ground,

the taste of stars in the fertile crescents of sex

that open gates of mud brick glazed with lapis lazuli

and towers that stand like lighthouses in wet deserts.

Moonrise in the black lace of the treeline, I’m

not immune to the persuasion of your lunar mirages

but now that I’m older, fire-master of the dragon

I used to be, I’m a distinguished pyre that doesn’t

burn easily for anybody that can’t steal me

like fire from the gods I’ve neglected to worship

for the better part of a life I’ve lived as if

I were chosen to thrive in exile like a noble pariah

that placed no faith in the religious superstitions

of his long fall to paradise without a shadow of proof

to show for it except these nightshifts of solitude

where I hammer out stars on the anvil of my heart

into a bestiary of extinct zodiacs, sundials

like lapwings and swords of moonlight I mean

to give back to the waters of life in due course

they were once wounded by without spite or remorse.

PATRICK WHITE