WHY LIVE LIKE A WRECKED SHIP

Why live like a wrecked ship

running around giving lie-detectors to lighthouses

on the battered coasts of your lunar indignation

to see if they’re telling the truth?

I can see your skull from here

rising like the moon

not waiting for anything

like an abandoned throne.

It doesn’t remember the lies you told

like distress calls in the night

to prove that nobody loved you,

it doesn’t remember your heart like an ambulance

that never delivered anyone alive on arrival.

There was a stairwell, remember?---

in a palace of water

that tasted of fireflies and bells,

and fish that swayed through heavy curtains of blood

like the afterlives of mystic oceans

that have long forgotten they never had names

and you were the kind of homeless music

a man can only dream he’s heard

when I first saw you upon it, descending.

Beauty is not a word

things say often and mean

but you were the first time

I ever understood

how the light saw itself

when there were no eyes

to frame the limit of what could be seen.

I’ve run out of wisdom and spirit and night

trying to make you happen again

in the deepening silence

like a tide that pulled me under

to undo the moon from your nets.

And I still can’t tell if I’m an urn

or a lifeboat full of ashes

but my heart is a gate

I’m always closing behind me

as if I don’t want to be followed.

PATRICK WHITE