Thursday, December 5, 2013

YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME

YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME

Your eyes are a blue crack of sky to me at the bottom
of a very deep mine. And when your heart shines down
it’s not a flashlight but a majestic sunset I’m looking up at.

Under this avalanche of gravestones
I’m trying to sing the dead back to life.
I’m beguiling the gibbering shades with picture music
that sings like deadly nightshade
to the bruised darkness within me
people keep stepping out of
like the ghosts of white nocturnal orchids
pale as the ghoulish moon on the limbs
of the naked dead trees the herons build their nests in.

It’s the function of a prophetic Orphic skull
to walk among the dark jewels of the underworld
with all the eyes open in its blood
but none to see into the blue sky above
what you’re looking at when when you

see how blind I am to the wavelengths copulating in your eyes
like the twining of two snakes on a caduceus
topped with the snowflake of a dove.
Hermes Trismegistus for a companion guide
and a little girl who leads me around like a seeing eye dog.

I’m sort of the Teresian Orpheus of my own hybridization
who keeps falling back like Sisyphus with a gravestone
when nothing’s coming back above ground
but the stars in another round of your zodiacally clear eyes.


PATRICK WHITE

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