AM I TOO FAR AWAY
Am I too far away for you
to hear my voice
calling out to you
like an autumn hill in the fog?
Your absence is archetypically protean
and missing you
I make things up
to amuse my sorrow.
I know I’m only teaching the rain
how to draw circles
and reading bedtime stories
to enraptured constellations
that will retell them
like myths of their own
just to ease the pain
of living themselves as they happen,
but I’d sooner dance with the fireflies
under flashing chandeliers
that astonish the light
that hides in the mirrors
I’ve polished from the radiance of my tears,
than beat the music out of my head with bones
or ask the freeborn of poetry
to stand guard outside the door
in the livery of headstones
while I trivialize matters of state
by imposing myself like a gate
on all who pass this way
like refugees and rivers
with all they own
like the world
on the shoulders of bridges
who groan like lead
under the dead weight
of being the backbone
of an imperial history
they bear like an aquaduct without water.
So I play with your absence
in the foregone emptiness
as if it were a muse
that dishevels the bed
with the creative miscreance
of a darker genius than night
that delights in the coy taboos
that risk the mystic thresholds
of an illuminating vice.
And sometimes
when you’re the last star burning
on my event horizon
and I’m falling like my last penny
into the wishing-well of a black hole
that doesn’t give anyone a return on their money,
I press my ear to your voice
and listen to the intimate distance
like a star-crossed prophet of sin
crying out alone in the wilderness
to be tempted.
And some hear the sea
in the sex of your shell
and wind up drifting for years
in the rip-tides of their tears
like a message for help
that raises its sails in a bottle
but I listen to the desert
that howls through your skull
like the deathbed confessions
of lonely gods untempled by the wind
and refuse to embalm my faith in pyramids
though I’ve been known
to slip more than one loveletter
like the Rosetta stone
of a lost dream grammar
like the shadow of a bird
with no return address
under the heavy eyelids
of the setting moon
as if I had just asked something
of a sphinx on the fly
without expecting an answer.
PATRICK WHITE
