THE KITE UNDOES ITS OWN STRING

THE KITE UNDOES ITS OWN STRING

The kite undoes its own string like a spinal cord hydro line

it stole like a line of poetry from the sheet music

of the Zeitgeist reading its own crystal skull

as if there were too many notes in it to call.

See stars. See birds on a stave. See music x-rays

from the grave like the visual fragrance of what we are.

All night long on the corner of Clinton Street and Desolation Row.

Gore and the Universe at a restaurant called Passiflora.

In the bright sunshine, tanning, at a table outside,

so you didn’t look like a blade of stargrass under a yellow board.

As if things were too good to be true. When

you didn’t think about things like the raw, new moon of a tumour.

And tiny ice pellets flicked like whips and ladyfingers

into your face like Tom Thomson considering one of his paintings

by firelight in the parking lot outside the emergency entrance

to suicide. Stark, bleak, helicopters, I bet you weren’t expecting that,

like dragonflies landing on a lily pad that’s lost its flowers.

Is this genius? Is this madness? Who cares?

Come along for the ride and pretend you’re sick.

Sick people like sick people better in a hospital

reading Jean Paul Sarte and Beckett while they’re waiting for Godot

like a fly on a wall they wished they listened to but I don’t.

PATRICK WHITE