OUT OF SO MUCH

OUT OF SO MUCH EXPERIENCE

 

Out of so much experience

so little to signify it

in a language

extraterrestrial life could understand

about our relationship with gravity

and what’s crudely human about being a human

we don’t even have in common with ourselves.

Out of so much sorrow

so many tears shed

like oceans of wounded salt

like bruised orchids of blood

like the lightyears between windows

living next door to each other

there is so much vastness between us

in an expanding universe

in the way we reach out to each other

like the stars in wavelengths of farewell

toward the red end of the spectrum.

Out of so much radiance

so much shining

not even the ash of anything

to show for it

when the last ghost has left town

with leaving so much

as a loveletter of smoke

propped up against the mirror.

Out of so much that was seen once only for good

and for a moment understood

until we started thinking about it

my eyes taste of what they’ve seen

like iron apples ripening in the rain

no one can take a bite out of

to improve their education

by learning how to bury the dead

because most of what I’ve seen

is pain without insight

pain without eyes

like impact craters in the skull of the moon.

A war of windows in a world without vision

without stars

without dawn and moonrise.

Viral eyes that abhor stained-glass

as much as they do the godless clarity

of the most advanced telescopes

playing Russian roulette with the stars

to prove the Big Bang was cosmic suicide

and we’re here like living proof of the afterlife

of its bad karma

like a hunting religion in an agrarian society.

Out of so much mystic specificity

so little sense of earthly union

in the fractious sameness

that tries to blame everyone else

for why things are falling apart

as fast as they’re coming together.

Five petals open.

And no flower blooms.

The sun rides a victory chariot through Rome.

The moon a deathcart through a slum.

But the stars know

how much the night keeps to itself.

How much it can’t say

when the silence clears the sky of birds.

How much there is to express

that leaves even the dead speechless.

Out of so much verbiage

so many words

so many opinions

stuck like bats in burrs

just beyond the porchlight.

Out of so much hatred of life

out of so much hatred

of light and water

air earth and fire

compressed like a fist of coal

around the blood diamonds of the ideologues

who write political suicide notes

for whole nations by proxy

who don’t know how to bleed for themselves

or convince the dead

they died for someone else.

Out of so many words

so many civilizations

from the Tower of Babel

to the New York Metropolitan

with its polyglot fire alarms

warning Alexander

about the approach of Caesar

and his love of books.

Out of so many voices

that spoke like trees in the wind

or out of burning bushes

and the light of the stars

or the thunder that follows the revelation

that it’s raining on a lifeless Mars.

Out of so much clamour and noise of insight.

Out of so many whispers of stars

and rumours of waves

held up to both our shell-shocked ears

like skulls of oceanic awarenessness

that found us washed up on a beach somewhere

after some serious weather.

Out of so many poems and paintings and heartfelt polygraphs.

Out of so much confessing.

Out of so many speechs.

So many prayers and blessings

So many dead languages that carried their mother-tongue

like mitochondrion in the DNA of their mouths

down through the generations

so that every living word

contains the corpse of a metaphor

like a mummy under a pyramid

or Lazarus catching his breath

to be interviewed

about a life after death

that looked exactly like his

when he woke up to this all over again

with nothing much to say about anything.

Out of so many with so much to say

how few are listening

as if their lies depended on it.

 

PATRICK WHITE