I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

 

I have not forgotten you.

You have a long half-life

and time isn’t alchemist enough

to turn so much gold back into lead.

It’s just that when I think of you

I bloom like an empty box

sliced at its corners

by an exacto-knife of pain

and my mind weeps like a wounded jewel.

A gust of stars like the dust of the road

I can’t rub out of my eyes,

a garden on the moon

that’s never known a gate,

a wishbone of rivers

served up on a silver plate,

I keep seeing you in everything

as if I were certain now

that spring isn’t the past or future of fall.

I remember you like an exile

remembers a country

he left like an open door

when he stepped out into the night

like light from a lamp

that wasn’t a home

he could return to anymore.

You punctuated the equilibrium

of my hasty evolution

and I’ve lost count of the transformations

I’ve been through

guided by your eyes.

Coercively young,

subversively old,

mending the night

like a black sail

with the same thorn of the moon

that tore it 

on the shores of my marooned desires,

I endure myself like the sea

that aches with the music of sunken guitars

pressing the soiled strings of their spinal cords

against the frets of their scars so sadly

that every thought, every feeling

is a last flash of life in a receding tide

that left the bride

behind her veils

in port.

 

PATRICK WHITE