EVENTUALLY THE MOON

EVENTUALLY THE MOON

 

Eventually the moon

struggles out of its cradle

like a sulphur butterfly

out of its house of change.

And far, far away

in the loneliest of deserts

that cling to a skull like thoughts

someone waits like water

spilled from the countless eyes

that have looked to her

like a cool eclipse for healing.

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

but she makes their wounds seem beautiful

and their madness a fashion of God

running naked through the surf

of an orchard in bloom.

Twice in a doorway

and once in a grocery store

in broad daylight

I have tasted the black rose

of her collusive shadow

opening all her eyelids

like phases of the far side of the moon in me,

unspooling the fragrance of her darkness

to sweeten the night that overcomes me

whenever I see her.

Dark beauty, cormorant, stars pour

from the shapely pitcher of your body

into the dry wishing wells of my eyes

and all things are granted in a moment

it would take a lifetime to repair.

Sphinx without history,

black box of the mystery,

I dream and drift

with the serpentine currents

of these themes of you

like the pale lifeboats

of blossoms and poems on the nightstream

and everywhere

I’m building bridges in the air.

And a great tenderness shakes me

as I press the head of an arrow to my lips

like the last jewel of a foolish prince

or the shadow of a bird against the moon

or a crazy wise man’s last word

and release it like a spirit with flare

to fire the night with fountains and flowers

to summon you here with me

like the alluring simulacrum

of an unspoken intimacy

that inspires my eyes to see

beyond the dark gates

and flaming swords of poetry,

and the light that brings peace to the garden,

and the law that can only be kept

by the breaking of it

and the sad music of compassionate hearts

that have been broken like bells

and the children whose blood

was violently spilled

and runs like a river through hell

we’ll all have to cross one godforsaken night,

beyond the infinite expanse of the middle extreme

like a third wing on a bird

that baffles the guardian dragons,

beyond the clarity and the darkness

of the wisdom and the lies

where the rivers meet for sex

and the lowest stars on the horizon

are the flashbacks of enlightening psychodelics,

talking in the unbroken code

of the mandalic relics

that yarrow the Book of Changes

like the ups and downs

of fossils swimming through stone.

Beyond the wind

that blows the stars into my eyes

like chimney sparks and firelies

and rattles the diamond bones

of the skeletal chandliers

that dance to their own music

and saturates the summer night air

with the most poignant of delusions,

and further beyond the wind that clarifies

the eyes of the wounded water

that fell on the swords of its own waves,

beyond what condemns and saves,

beyond the palaces of the slaves who master

and the palaces of the masters who enslave,

and the quicksand cornerstone hovels

of those who uphold them,

and the revolutions that fail for their own sake

to escape the wheel of the prophecies that foretold them

like the blood of a dove in the heart of a snake,

beyond the ashes of the burning cities

that gave a human voice to the flames

like oxygen that screams

and the barely audible syllables

of people without names

who were hurriedly buried in pits at night

like the student bodies

of old backdoor universities

that dared to indict the juntas of death

that covered their eyes like sunglasses on a skull

to witness their own eclipses

in the outhouse pulpits

of a war crimes trial.

Beyond the beatific and the vile,

the black mirror and the white

that God keeps up her sleeve

to trump whatever you believe

until the candle goes out

like the seer and the seen

and you are left alone in the dark

before the arising of eyes and signs

bore witness to the singular event

of that mysterious seeing

that brought the world into being

that you know as your own life

that darkness within darkness

where you must go like a star

by your own light

like a lamp already

beyond its long journey

without a guide.

Beyond all this in a space

I cannot locate or name

as if God spoke in a foreign language

in a native tongue of flame

when she created this world of desire

that keeps pouring its heart out like an urn

to renew its capacity for death,

for churning ashes into honey

without getting burned,

where the universe forsakes its own laws

like a straitjacket

and the freedom is not the freedom

of the crazy or the sane

still handcuffed to each other

like two ends of the same bone

they keep running through forensics

to distinguish the perp from the crime,

but a sublime profusion of cool bliss

that I exist to feel this eclipse

in the heart of the shining

and drink this dark elixir

from the well

of a homeless mirage on the moon

as if it were more real than water

and watch in unadmonished wonder

how it deranges me creatively

like stars agitated by the unknown atmosphere

of a planet that’s wandered far off the path alone

past the thirteenth house of the zodiac

waiting in its illegitimacy

like eyes at a window

to be acknowledged by the sun

across the tracks

of the proper perspective

into shipshifting constellations of its own

that grow as the night grows

and can’t be retold

in a familiar voice

around the same fire twice.

 

PATRICK WHITE