ON EVERY LEAF

On every leaf, on every tongue,

the whole history of the river

in every drop,

last autumn uncovered again by the rain

as a prelude to spring.

Will I be uncovered again

for revival; will this crimson branch

of dark arteries

be revealed again

like the ground willow

and the sodden thatch

of my broken flesh

be composed naked in the light again

after the long, heavy robes of winter,

the folds of the snow and the sky,

are flung away by the sleeper

to expose the truth of the dream?

If I was born once;

isn’t resurrection a redundancy,

or if I am unborn, a delusion,

as spring is the grandest of all delusions

to convince me I am immortal

and the only thing

that grows old without me is time?

Spring doesn’t take autumn by the arm

to help it across the ice;

and winter isn’t summer

wearing a chastity belt

waiting for her crusading husband

who follows the geese

to come back seasonally with the keys.

On the circumference

of the sunwheels and the starmills,

time incessantly grinds for me

like a huge, white, wide-eyed,

sadly powerful, well-loved ox

that labours like a bell

to strike life from the last hour of the watch

that begins and ends me world after world

like eyelids

like my heartbeat

like the soft breathing

of the spring moon at the door

after her first eclipse,

disguised as a woman

I loved long ago,

back from the dead,

back from the black fire

that covers its veil with a face.

How could anyone possibly

disappear and be forgotten

when life’s the veil,

life’s the deathmask,

life’s the blaze in your bones

that remembers your face?

PATRICK WHITE