I COULDN'T HAVE LIVED IT

I COULDN’T HAVE LIVED IT

I couldn’t have lived it any differently

than it lived me so inseparably

like the moon’s reflection on the water

there’s no point in trying to lift my life

like an emerging face by the corners

out of the developer in a dark room

to see whom I’ve been saying goodbye to

all the years it took to grow into me

all the years I’ve been following myself

like a wanted poster I cut two holes in for my eyes

and wore like a mask into an allnight casino on the moon.

When I look back sometimes upon my life

like a shadow who’s tagged along for the ride

it’s been a long, long getaway to the other side of nowhere

as I’ve lived through these eyeless deserts of myself

from one well to the next

like a slut of water.

And maybe I would have surrendered

if I had found anyone to surrender to

but when I turned around to give myself up

there were no posses in the light

no stool or noose of stars hanging over me in the night.

And everything after that has felt

like the random solitude of the wind

without beginning or end

blowing on the stars

like the heater of my cigarette

to pass the time

and see if I can make them brighter.

But at night the desert turns the mike over to space

and my emotions have a chance to expand

like a herd going over a precipice

or a heart clinging to the moon

like a barnacle on the side of a pyramid sunk in sand

and when I listen to myself

there’s always a left-handed afterlife

living me like a holdup I hadn’t planned.

And then there are times

when I am uplifted by some stray gust of stars

like a dusty fingerprint on the trigger of the moon

I’m pointing like some suicidal holy man at my own temple

trying to convert the thief in me to a new way to steal

from the serpent’s purse that strikes at my heel like a bank alarm

in the desparate attempt of a fading mirage

to prove I’m real.

And then those nights, those long hideous nights

when the darkness hardens like a lump of coal

and shatters me like a windowpane

when I am the least convincing argument

for the existence of God

that I’ve ever met

and the only way that I can forget,

the only way I can keep from going insane

is to live in vain

as if my life depended on it.

PATRICK WHITE