EVERY TIME I LEFT
Every time I left I came back to a different door.
My blood never wandered.
It just didn’t recognize the heart
it kept returning to
like a tide to a shore
that was never the same.
Now I can’t tell the way I’m leaving
from the way I came
but the only time I ever feel lost
is when I want to be found.
There may be the flakey arrowhead
of a primitive direction
chipped from the basalt rock
by some Michelangelo of flint-knapping
nestled like the shard of an ostrakon
somewhere among my bones,
but if I’ve ever been headed anywhere
it’s always been here and now
where space and time don’t exist
and I’m going off in all directions at once
like everything else in the expanding universe
whose lonely thresholds follow it like light
deeper into the growing darkness
like the footprints of an unenlightened man
back to the native homelessness
where he began.
Even the script of a bad play
can be a myth of beginnings
when the actors could be anyone
who can feign a face in the mirror
like a traffic sign
trying to read between the lines
of what makes the puppets dance
to the scarred guitars of their tears.
You didn’t understand my joys
and I couldn’t fathom your fears
or how anyone could sit on their throne
like bait in a leghold trap
and not expect to get bitten
by the jaws of the croc of their crown.
It wasn’t me that swallowed the moon.
Your body lifted me up
and my spirit brought you down
like a parachute that candled
everytime you pulled the rip-cord on the sky
to ease your fall from grace
but you were the sacred flame
of a hot air balloon
that thought she was a comet
who came as a sign
to everyone else but herself
that I was about to fall from a high place
like a snowflake on a furnace
and disappear like a waterbird
without a trace or a tear
or a farewell kiss
to empower the clown
to be true to his own hopelessness
whenever you weren’t around
like a lifeboat on the moon
and things ran aground
on the reefs of your scuttled seas.
And the sails that huddled like blossoms
on the dead branch of the wharf
have given the orchard up to the wind
like a lost soul on a long journey
that can’t see the oceans in your eyes from here.
But I could have told you,
I could have climbed up
on the scaffolding your constellation
and shouted from the rooftops of my voice
like the rooster of a supernova
shaking up the shining
in a distant galaxy
that even when you’re out of sight
the stars still don’t lie to the night
but you were the one
who was convinced
the truth always deceived me
and I’ll confess it now
like Galileo recanting his own eyes
flat on his stomach before the pope,
my tears as contrite as my lenses,
I wasn’t enough of a telescope
to get a liar to believe me
when I showed you
the shadows of the mountains on the moon
were not those phoney eyelashes
you put on every morning
like an eclipse that painted
with a broad brush
the blood stains
on the relics of a martyr’s remains.
And even the search parties of fireflies
I sent out to look for you
like my own eyes
came back with zen messages
from an echo in an empty bottle
that had been smashed like a lamp on a rock
where they expose the bad babies
like flawed light
to clarify their own place
in a starless vision of night
before the arising of signs.
But I learned to read your eyes
like the lees of the dark wines
that haemorraged like the moon
at the bottom of every skull you emptied
like a fortune-cookie
or the shell of the sea that was you
you held up to your ear
like someone who’d stopped breathing
to overhear what even the voices
in the backrooms of the future
that never came,
though it had promised you so much,
couldn’t make clear.
And you’re not to blame.
And I’m not to blame,
and there’s no need
to limp around on our skeletons
like a crutch we’re trying to throw away
like a miracle at the top of the stairs
we climbed on our knees
to have our hearts cut out
and held up to the roaring sky
like sacrificial examples
of how to greet the moon
like the kissing stone
of a plundered temple.
A thousand and one mirages may gather
like shadows at night
around the wells of a dream
they draw from like the eyes of a desert
to recall the themes of their gods
like the flames of fire
the morning puts out like a star
the light has washed away,
and when they wake as we did
to the curious irrelevancy of this new day
with no one to forgive us for forgetting
who we were and might have been to each other,
who could have imagined
after such an appeasement of lovers
at the extremes of each other’s altars
we covered in cloaks of blood
to keep the angels at bay
we’d both end up gaping at the moon
like the open wounds
of experienced messengers
with nothing to say?
PATRICK WHITE
