NOT RETURN

NOT RETURN

 

Not return

to some moment of happiness

that ran out to meet you at the gate

or some state of imagined innocence

that’s just one more myth

behind the parting curtain.

Not return to a yesterday

that’s as impossible to know 

as the future

because everything’s estranged

by the time it takes to get back here.

Ask any quantum mechanical physicist.

The only thing you can say

about the nature of things

is they’re not certain.

Why take refuge in history

thinking it’s fixed and finished

when there’s no more stability in the past

than there is in the present?

Any attempt to get right down

to the bottom of things

to master the world

with numbers and names

because numbers have guile

and names have power

will end up trying to define chaos.

The mutable maculate world as it is

is the definition of chaos

and order’s just a passing gesture

of inchoate sensory mayhem. 

Your obelisk is standing

on a cornerstone of quicksand

the moment you say I am

and mean it as if you were

an isolated monad

of self-contained sentience

and not the wind blowing

through the window

of another abandoned house

like a skull

to see if you still live there.

Not return

but transcendence.

Embracing the uncertainty

as a door to change

that opens from the inside out.

You’re the biggest obstacle in the way

of what you will become

as you go your own way like water

but one key of doubt

is enough to undo a thousand rocks

the way the sun undoes all the flowers

without prying them open

by forcing the issue.

The point is

to keep enough confusion in your clarity

to stay human

enough chaos in your cosmos

to keep your wet cells from turning into crystals

your sad eyes from believing

they’re just drops in an ocean of mirrors

that is smudged by whatever appears

like you with your black sail unfurled

like the skull and crossbones

on your own event horizon.

Not return

but transcendence.

Allowing yourself to grow beyond

your own expectations

without meaning to.

Keeping just enough

madness in your method

to justify your sanity.

Enough absurdity in the sage

to keep the truth happy

and the Buddha laughing out loud

at what we’re all trying to get away with

when we take ourselves so seriously

we ask what it’s all about

as if there were never any room

for darkness or doubt

in the infinite abyss of enlightenment.

Darkness is the ore of light.

Suffering is the ore of bliss.

Ignorance is the ore of insight.

The meaning of life

isn’t a kiss on the cold forehead of the dead

before the coffin slides like a Viking funeral ship

into a propane sea of fire in a carpeted crematorium

as if the dead were offended by the sound of the living.

Live intensely enough in the unknowing

and one of these lives

that’s just as good as another

the gold will come pouring out of you

like a secret you kept to yourself.

You’ll pull the magic sword

out of the philosopher’s stone

like King Arthur and Alexander the Great.

You’ll live up to yourself as you are this very moment.

You won’t hesitate.

You’ll know the light isn’t divided

into night and day

and when you’re called upon

to be wise and compassionate

you’ll know what to say to Shakespeare

between the lines of his best play

when he asks you not to think about Lear

shaking his fist at the gods

as a sign of defiance

that dignified anything.

Learn to love well enough in life

to justify the sorrow of your separation

and accept the way things change

away from us sometimes

and leave us looking for fulfillment in their absence

and the moonlight on your skin

won’t burn like lime

on the corpse within.

You’ll stay human

even in this

and your grief will flow like a local river

into an oceanic abyss of blissful sorrow

that makes no distinction

between yesterday and tomorrow.

You’ll discover that it’s all the same day now

like time in a dream

and recover what you lost

a long time ago

like something you looked forward to in passing

when the moonlight was urgent

with white waterlilies on the nightstream

and enlightenment kept you guessing.

 

PATRICK WHITE