CHANCING UPON MYSELF

CHANCING UPON MYSELF

Chancing upon myself alone in the bedroom mirror

as I pass like a flash of the moon on stormy water

I realize I can’t even call my reflection my own

as the demon who gives, and the angel who won’t say

renew me once again like the first draft

of an old passion play off Broadway.

What difference between the lake and the sky

or me and the mirror

when we both look into each other

from behind the same face through the same eyes?

And the demon suggests to me

in an off-handed voice

as if the insight were obvious,

that everything in the universe

is the likeness of everything else,

and the darkest joy to ever inspire

life upon earth, the open secret

that gapes in the hearts

of the humans who seek it,

is to revel in the similitudes.

It’s not necessary to dust

the water or the sky with stars

to see who left their fingerprints behind

when all you’ve got to do

is turn yourself inside out

like that forensic glove you’re wearing like skin

to identify who’s who for the record.

Of course, it’s you. Of course, it’s me.

Who else?

And there you go again

perpetrating the universe upon yourself

as if you were somehow hidden within it

as the angel puts her finger to her lips

and the demon kisses what’s forbidden,

all those differences born of the simulacra

that embed themselves like the green star in the apple

that teaches the wine

that the first property of light

is to shine,

is to intensify the darkness into diamonds

that will weep in their own fires for joy

that all the different stories, all

the myriad forms in the night

tarry along the road

to gaze up in astonishment

at the same constellation

that was born under you

as if you were the crystal skull

in the house of the dark mother

that determined its fate.

The taste of the vine

in darkness and light

is our simultaneous illumination

and just as the sun raises

the slender goblets

of the morning glory to its lips

and drinks the moonlight down

to the lees of a full eclipse

so are we always drunk

on our own inter-reflected shining,

drunk on a world that’s drunker than us,

setting a course by the fireflies

who guide us like sunken ships

who never left port

to the wilderness coast of continents

that no one’s ever been before

though there are signs of our drinking

scattered like a billion messages

in a billion broken bottles

all along the shore

and waves of light

drunk on their own diamonds

deliriously muscling their way out of the water

like the horse-bodies of the gods

they’re learning to ride like humans

to their own rescue.

PATRICK WHITE