THE LIE IN YOUR THROAT
The lie in your throat:
another lapis luzuli nightengale
you’ve added to a Byzantine mechanical tree,
dead meat down your own well.
What’s the point of taking centre stage
if you’ve got this huge, astronomically expansive
iridescently supersensible soap-bubble around you
like a womb that doesn’t intend
to ever let go
as the stars grow further apart
resigned to the distances between us?
My heart is an alloy of darkness and silence.
I’ve always been able to imagine my way out of anything
from a black hole to a leg-hold trap
but now I’m zoned out in hyperspace
before the monstrous enormity
of this protean emptiness
like a universe that’s suddenly realized
the way to last forever
is just run out of beginnings.
So nothing ever gets born
and nothing ever perishes.
But it’s underwhelming yourself
to spend a life
trying to sweep the stars
out of the sky
with your eyelashes
like the constellation of an ex-lover
condemned to the slums of a zodiac
slated for demolition.
And I’m not content to ride the tides
that come and go
like a skeleton in a lifeboat
holding on to some last hope of rescue
someone will eventually throw a lifeline
to a puppet on the rocks.
And there’s an exquisitely fine line
between cynicism and serenity
just as there is between
the metal in the stone of the heart
and the sword that no one can pull from the fire
or give back to the lake in devotion
because it falls upon itself
like the reflection of the moon
snailing its way to enlightenment like an open wound.
In short, I don’t know anymore about
who the fuck I am
than I do who you are
and one mile east is always
one mile west of here
and there’s a light, there’s fire,
and only stars in a black mirror
deeper than night
could suggest your beauty
on both sides of my eyes
when I am summoned by these images of you
like water to a tree on the moon in full blossom.
And it’s getting harder and harder to know
whether it’s the torch I’m holding
or me that’s upside down,
or the darkness that’s lying in wait
like the shadow of an assassin
raised by the light
to put it out
so I take the lid off my mind
like a masonjar of fireflies
I let go like sparks from a chimney
to shake out into whatever constellations they want.
And seeing the north star that I have followed for years
like the truth and constancy of a love sonnet
feeling baffled, lost, a little out of place
not knowing how to go before itself into the darkness
like a lamp in the arms of a journey
and its own blood
the only map of the heart it’s got to go by
in the melee of all this liberated radiance
afraid to follow itself
to the source of the hesitant waters
that silt the banks of the lifeline on its palm
with stars you can plant in
like pyramids in good soil;
I aspire to my higher side
and set my eye like a jewel
at the nave of a dreamcatcher
I’ve hung in your window like a new dimension
you can follow in all directions
and still be true to the night
like the first star of an eye
that ripened in darkness
like a bead of light
that runs like water down an apple
and tastes of your own seeing
like a nightstream flowing down
the mountains of the moon
with only that sea of shadows
you cast like breadcrumbs
and crosswalks on the water
to guide you out of the harbour
like a tide without a lifeboat,
blood without a heart,
or the lie that’s caught in your throat
like a harp of the moon
you keep pulling apart like a wishbone
or a witching stick at a sacred joining of rivers
trying to divine your own waters
as if they always flowed under your feet
like a secret path that’s only a secret
to those that walk it alone.
PATRICK WHITE
