YOUNG

YOUNG

 

Young

every breath I took in

was longer than the one I let out

but older

for every twelve inches of air I breathe in

I fall back a thousand feet

without a parachute

when I breathe it out.

I fall slowly backwards

in a crucified reverse swan dive

or a clear-cut tree

from the edge of a high precipice

into the sweet oblivion of an abyss

that is generous enough to receive me

like a good host receives its only guest.

And I’m free.

My blood burns like a poppy in full bloom

but nothing is consumed.

And I can look upon

my thoughts and emotions

copulating in the grass like snakes

without going blind

or undergoing a sex change.

And everything

even something so familiar and intimate

as a coffee and a cigarette

as I watch the smoke unspool

like a sad lazy kind of music

I can almost hear with my eyes

is estranged from me

as I am from them

and the way we once stood up for each other

like a national anthem

leaves everything feeling

like an illegal alien at heart.

Stranger than any place I’ve ever been

is the way home feels

knowing I’ll be on my way back forever

with wings on my heels

like a message I can’t deliver

from the silence of the gods.

It’s as if language had been invented

to express

what I can’t say

even to myself alone

of what I’ve witnessed in myself

about what it means

and doesn’t mean

to be a human

reflecting on the solitude

of immaterial awareness

like the moon on moving water.

It’s bad spiritual manners

to ask a mystery to explain itself

but it’s a classy kind of bliss

to wonder.

The important thing

is to touch the issue

lighter than space

as if you were reaching out

with your fingertips

to touch a loved one’s face.

Sometimes I’m a child

in her arms once more

and others

she’s a lover in the doorway

coming in out of a late night rain

long after I thought

I’d never see her again.

When she’s Isis

I’m mesmerized by stars

and when I’m

dancing in the snakepit with Medusa

I’m stone-cold hypnotized

by the effortless way

she moves to the music

you can see in her eyes

taking hold of you

as if death

were the ultimate sexual technique.

But mostly I’m alone with my molecules

wondering why

she gathered us all here

into these elaborate complexes

of conceptual derangement

if she never intended to appear in the first place.

Demonic fire-orchids

on the black waters

of shipwrecked belief

when every breath I take

blows me off course like the Spanish Armada

and she is the muse of the defeated

who were humbled

by the nonsense of power

that made fools out of them

and the virgin curse

of the rose they deflowered immaculately

as if their seed were forbidden

life in the sea

and their dead

were the subjects of bells. 

And it isn’t as if

among thousands of black sails

you don’t occasionally see a white one

like Van Gogh’s lone iris

standing out like a homely white gown

among the imperial throng of the purple ones

who keep a close eye on coloured things

like an ambiguous sign of things to come

they couldn’t possibly fathom.

And deep in the bottomless abyss

with nowhere to surface

I’ve seen rainbows at midnight

that don’t depend on the sun

to show them the bright side of their sorrows

or make a lot of promises

that will run out of tomorrows

long before the day is done.

And I have recalled old times

with cracked mirrors

who didn’t care who I was

as long as I was as forgotten as they were.

And it’s a sad religion

that won’t trust its reflection

to anything but water.

I’ve seen mine standing

like a prophetic heretic

at an open window

in an uplifting fire

that burned the thirteenth house

of the zodiac down

like the kingdom of heaven

on the wrong side of the tracks.

And when I’ve turned the telescope around

and changed lenses like eyes

to call the galaxies back like refugees

long past their unknown origins

I’m staring into a well

full of fireflies

that can’t hear me when I yell

into the breathless vastness of the moment

like a lighthouse too far out alone

does anyone remember the way home?

And it’s only my voice that answers

like a lost and found

with a sense of compassion

whether you make a wish

or take a good guess

no more than time

can walk out on space

slamming the door behind it

or now can be separated from here

or a thought from the mind that conceived it

or a wave from water

or a flame from fire

or your next breath

from the one you took before it

and you can run in any direction you like

now is only as far as you can ever get from here.

And here is the back and front door

of your homelessness

just as the past and the future

are the only return and forwarding address

you’ve ever had

for this moment now

that leaves all its endless thresholds

and the frayed threads

of all the dark rivers and roads

all the bodies and shoes

it’s traveled down without

an exit or entrance in mind

standing in the doorway of an abyss

that doesn’t have one

and like you when the emptiness

strips the autumn

of all your afterlives

neither leaves nor arrives.

 

PATRICK WHITE