NO END

NO END

No end of the desecrations and devotions

that afflict me like your eyes.

I don’t need a theory of parallel universes

to convince me I’m born in one, die

in another, and never existed in the next.

I’ve had to juggle more worlds than that

just to maintain my balance in an unalanced context

whenever you’ve walked into the room

and I was an awkward ship far out

on the nightsea you were

on the dark side of the moon.

Now I seriously doubt if I’ve ever known

what world this is

or what quantum of karma

elaborates me in it like a wave on the move.

It takes a dark wind to blow dark things away

and shed a black deathsail like an eclipse

to let people know you’re still alive from afar

like a star before the arising of signs,

always a night ahead of your own light.

Aligned with you, all my compasses lied to me,

and my planets wobbled axially like drunk tops

stumbling along the white line

unspooled like a standard orbit

by testy cops at a roadside check.

In that world and in several since

you have been a mysterious intimacy of space

that touchs me like the whispering skin of a cool breeze

in an open field under the stars

deep into my solitude

and late, later than the last fruits of autumn

into my life.

And even when I remember you now

in this affinity of dimensions

without a threshold

my heart overflows its own cup

like rivers and wine

to adorn the passage

of love through time.

PATRICK WHITE