I LOOK INTO PEOPLE'S FACES

I LOOK INTO PEOPLE’S FACES

 

I look into people’s faces

and I see the same wound

under many different scars.

I look into their hearts

like a stranger at night

through a passing window

and I see how suffering through

the agonies of life

has ripened some

with sweetness and compassion

and others are already rotten before they fall.

I look into people’s eyes

and some are vast starlit skies

and some are the iota subscripts

of scholarly fireflies

that footnote the constellations

at the bottom of the page

with details off the beaten path

of their MLA mainstream cosmic thesis.

And some are like moons

with parenthetical crescents

with nothing in between

both sides of their smile

that isn’t a cynical aside

about the lost innocence

of a phase they’ve already gone through.

And some stare back like eclipses

that have pulled the blinds down

over their eyes

like sunglasses disguised

by a witness protection program

but you just know

they’re oilslicks on the Sea of Shadows

as they were in the womb

and in the Gulf of Mexico

the black blood of an incorporated miscarriage

that haemorraged like the pot of gold

at the end of the olaceous rainbow.

I look into people’s souls

and I see how afraid they must be of life

to hide out in the open

like an ocean

that hasn’t kept faith with its own depths

and tries to pretend it’s as airy and light as the sky.

The birds are flying through the roots.

The fish are swimming in the treetops.

I see judas-goats chained to the stakes of their ego-Is

like sacrificial tiger bait devoted to their cunning.

I see the anti-muses that shadow Mt. Helicon

like black holes

in the death valleys of human imagination.

And I wonder how they ever got here.

What bend in space led them to this twisted place

like a forsaken road

they keep taking

like a wormhole through time

into the womb of a stillborn universe

where the moonlight burns their embryos

on pyres of lime

beside the dry creekbeds

of nameless rivers going nowhere?

Along their flowerless banks

I see the rib-cages of dead snakes

that went witching for water

with tongues and tines of Kundalini lightning

that ran up their spines

like time through a waterclock

and the hulls of empty lifeboats

that died in the desert

at the bottom of the mirage

they drowned in

hoping to find themselves

among those who survived

by learning to swim through sand

like fish in an hourglass aquarium.

I’d rather walk on stars

reflected in the shattered mirrors

of my last self-image

than repay

the generosity of my solitude

with mass ingratitude.

I listen to people’s voices

and they all seem like the same echo

with many different mouths.

I’ve tried to respect

the mystic specificity

of the thousands of fierce individuals

I’ve met over the years

but the more I’ve learned

about myself and others

the more I see the same mind

in many different skulls.

The same genius of inspired water

that poured an ocean

of sentient awareness

into everyone of our cells.

Union differentiates.

Separation binds.

I look into people’s faces

however young or old they are

and I see infinite spaces

moonlighting as time

on the nightshift of the stars.

I see horror and compassion .

I see butterflies sipping the nectar of diamonds

like honey in the promised land

and maggots born in shit thriving on shit

like the janitors of the dead

because everything grows best

in the soil it was born into

like karma in the fortune-cookies

of wombs and eggs and cocoons.

I look into people’s eyes

like sad stars 

through the generous end of the telescope

that brings the far near

like impact craters

and I see how some people

cling to the memory of themselves

like underground seas

in frozen lockets of water on the moon.

I look into people’s secret shrines

they build like birds

in the eye of the storm

looking for salvation.

And I can hear the echo of their prayers

bouncing back off hydrogen clouds

like a nineteen twenties radio show

thousands of lightyears away

as if they just said them yesterday

and the universe as usual

threw the words back in their face

like the cosmic background hiss

of snowflakes on a furnace

going out like stars.

I’ve seen the innocence of fireflies

making halos

and the blood-rose weaving thorns

around the massive blackholes of death

as if they were merely a pinprick in a voodoo doll

that got into white magic by mistake.

I’ve looked into the nuclear blaze of madness

like an A bomb with shades on

and seen the flash and shadow

of embryo silhouettes

spit out like cave paintings

on the firewalls of the fusion wombs

that give birth to the heavier elements

it takes to survive.

But the water’s not mad

just because the moon’s a lunatic.

The mirror might seem

just as angry as you are

but it doesn’t feel a thing.

Learning wisdom is learning space.

It doesn’t eat flowers

and the weeds don’t sting.

It takes everything it embraces to heart

and nothing’s left out

from the very beginning.

Like the whole of the moon and the sky

in every eye of water

that’s ever looked into me

and seen that everyone

is the heart of a mystery

whose lucidity

is their only true identity.

Its our seeing that makes the flowers open

and the stars shine.

Its our hearing that gives the wind something meaningful to say

and the grass something to whisper about.

Whatever you touch

walks in your skin from thereon.

Whatever you taste

be it roses and nettles

or sulphur and wine

or the sour-sweet radiance

of the stars on your tongue

you’re the flavour of the day

in everything.

It’s your nose

that gives the burning leaves

in the urns of autumn

the spectral fragrance of chrysanthemums

that are barely holding on.

And it’s your mind.

Your heart.

Your blood.

Your body.

Your imagination.

Your intuition.

Your wisdom.

Your ignorance.

Your darkness.

Your light.

Your spirit

enlightened or deluded

whatever you think or feel

is abundantly missing

or dream you’re waking up to

that makes the world real

in every mystically specific detail

of who you are.

Who else?

I look into myself

as far as the stars at the edge of my seeing

fourteen point five billion lightyears away

and I can see how much time and space

how many species of life

generation after generation

have been born to give birth and die.

All the roses swept from the stairs of our hopeless tomorrows

because they were a tribute to love

meant for someone else.

All the spontaneous joys

that cast their long random shadows

like occasional fireflies of insight

across the lunar mindscape

of this afterlife of sorrows

where every church is the gravestone

of an unsuspecting god.

I look into my own seeing

like light upon light

in the vast expanse

of an unknowable night

and I’m cosmicly astonished

by how many worlds within worlds

eyes within eyes

minds within minds 

lives within lives it takes

to make a single habitable human being

meaning everyone of us sacred fools

fit as a genius

for the crazy wisdom

of a creative life

in a self-inspired universe.

 

PATRICK WHITE