EVERY WORD IS THE SEED

EVERY WORD IS THE SEED

 

Every word is the seed

of a language all its own

that goes on expressing itself forever like a vine

that keeps to itself like a musical theme

with different flowers.

The new moon splits the darkness

and there are uneasy ghosts among the waterlilies

that star the mind with openings

that bloom like gates

it’s easier than water to walk through.

For years I thought I was lonely,

wingless among flying things,

but now I know the intimate liberty

that burns in the eyes of my solitude

is a muse of fire that never goes out

even in the mouths of the dragons

that sleep in my watersheds.

The protean potential of one is greater than two

because there’s no one there to define you

like a straitjacket, a cocoon, a fortune-cookie

that keeps churning out moths and dragonflies

while everyone expects monarchs.

I know no more about what I will become next

than I do about what colour a chameleon will turn

when you put it in front of a mirror.

But I trust my transformations

like a plough in fertile starfields

and honour the skins I’ve sluffed along the way

donating my myths in luminous braille,

the constellations and the leaves I’ve shed

as I moved on like autumn,

to the local library.

You can look at a star from earth

or you can see it from the inside

before the arising of signs

hides the dream of things to come in the light,

and you can say I am this

and here I will build my celestial city

but all cornerstones of self are bad dice

and however eloquent your shrine is

words are not a voice

and Be yourself when there’s nothing to be

is a slaver’s advice to the free.

 

PATRICK WHITE