ALL DAY LONG

All day long,

painting the moon in daylight outdoors

on the patio of a hive replenishing its casques of honey,

the whiskey zoo of ancient wheats, grapes, hops, rye,

fish, flesh, and the chickens of gradeschool, barnyard readers,

the windfall of a ready-made orchard enticing the wasps

with a keyboard of appetites, blossoms hired to serve,

little cups of the moon filled with the black wine of the bean,

and all the ants under the tables of one mind,

the functions of breadcrumbs and roadkill french-fries,

and the braver sparrows jesting with the customers for survival,

all of one reflexive conclusion, but the people,

the frayed threads of distant lightning over the hills,

fusing the mudball philosophies that keep rolling back down upon them,

insert, parry, thrust, stab, suggest, understate, insinuate

the power of the bone that beats on the inflated siloes of their ignorance,

trying on each other’s mouths like shoes,

like hooves of rocking-horse thunder,

blood mouths, chalk mouths, ink mouths,

all the razorwire conversations

of baffled humans

shouting between oracular watchtowers,

greeting each other with weapons in their hands,

wallets, women, the last planks

of a shipwrecked sense of humour,

and the women mending the torn nets

of the snagged silences

with the eyes of their supple needles,

the bleats and squeaks of agitated dolphins,

no more disappointing than people anywhere

defending the postage stamp to the death while ignoring

the love-letter that surrounds them like oxygen.

What a lonely secret life is;

what sad ashes in a flower of wine;

the human heart kindled like a guitar

to start a fire that inspires nothing but smoke.

PATRICK WHITE