DON'T OVER-READ THE SYMBOLS

DON’T OVER-READ THE SYMBOLS

Don’t over-read the symbols,

don’t see a street-sign

and turn it into a novel,

don’t add the effluvium

of all that irradiated meaning

to clean water, don’t

slag the clarity of the water.

There are things and things and things

myriad, translucent things

trying themselves on like shapeshifters

in the five mirrors of our own senses

to adjust their costume

to the play of infinite events

that have nerved space into us.

Isn’t it always a big night, a sell-out,

lines around the block

whenever you’re truly you?

I like those big, expansive nights

when I feel at home

in the homelessness of the world

as if I were everywhere

at peace with myself like water

that is wholly and discretely undone.

My blood unspools

to follow its own wayward longing

like a stream into a valley

where I dodge my own head

like a fallen stone

that can’t bruise the flowing.

Night or day, it’s impossible

to sever the light from its lamp.

We’re not the knower.

We’re not the known.

We’re purely forever now

and before we were born,

the imperfectible act

of a mind without witness

that is the knowing

that is this life without a that

because what could ever be missing

or retrievable, abundance or dearth,

in the empty siloes of the inconceivable?

You might think you’re

the pivot of the scissors

you gerrymandered

from the crescents of the moon,

shears at the throat of the mine,

and that you were only born once in time

with a tape-measure for a spine,

and the universe won’t fit

through the doorway

but the truth is

your birth

is ongoing,

flowing everywhere

into the roots of things,

through every crack and crevice,

out of your eyes

into the grapevines

and down the tongue of a leaf

like the silver syllables of the moon

that fall from rising wings.

If you listen to yourself at night

like a stream you can hear

but not see

as it lingers over itself in the swamps

like vapour

or surges through the grass

like the whisper of a snake

divining its own path without a polygraph

as it fountains and falls and evaporates

into clouds and underground themes

you will come to realize

how foolish it is

to try and select the music

when the snake has wings

and you are what the water sings.

PATRICK WHITE