AND NOW THE FLESHY DOWNSIDE

AND NOW THE FLESHY DOWNSIDE

 

And now the fleshy downside

of all my spiritual exuberance

for getting high on the charisma of life

even as it’s sitting right here with me

wishing it were someone else.

My eyes are sick of reading windows

and writing books.

I’ve dipped enough flightfeathers in ink

to turn a morning dove into a crow

and whatever I think

however deeply I feel

I still don’t know

if illusion is any less real than enlightenment

or deep in the center of my galactic soul

there’s a blackhole

like a pupil in the eye of God

the light pours into

and disappears into an abyss

that can’t be illuminated

by a good guru with a sad guess

however many excruciating extinctions he’s endured

to secure his happiness.

I’ve always considered it a flaw in my perception

if the world didn’t look right just as it is.

A cataract of chromatic aberration

around the lense of the telescope.

A cinder in the eye of the mirror

none of my tears could wash out.

Or as the Buddha said

Cataracts in the eye.

Flowers in the sky.

And even when it’s the stars

that give birth to your vision

as they did in my case

on lonely mountaintops late at night

outside the city

Flowers in the sky.

Cataracts in the eye.

So I said to myself

maybe there’s nothing wrong with this

and bliss is

delusion in a happy relationship with insight.

But the sky didn’t suddenly wake up

and see that it was dreaming

and no veil was lifted

no gold came pouring out

of the ore of a philosopher’s stone.

My eyes didn’t shed their scales like rose petals

and this most intimate issue of life and death

didn’t clarify itself

like the life-sustaining atmosphere

of my shrinking breath

on the mirror of my perception

trying on various deathmasks.

The sun still sported sunspots

and the moon’s complexion

was still pocked by the craters of meteor impacts.

All my life it seems

I’ve been stopped by my own extremes

one breath shy of perfection

as if I’d murdered a man back in Egypt

like Moses

and wasn’t allowed into the Promised Land

or was some warrior bodhisattva

of Zen compassion

in another lifetime

who refused to enter Nirvana

until all the homeless children

went through the gateless gate before him

with passports.

Now I sit here by myself

on this Ellis Island in my afterlife

and everybody is

gone gone gone gone beyond.

I move my fingers

in front of my lantern mind

and I slay giants on the wall with magic shadows.

The pen is only mightier than the sword

when it loves people

who can’t read or write a word

of what’s been written in their own blood

on the doors

of their mud-brick hieroglyphic homes

by the vampiric ideologies

of blind bloodless literate humans

throwing acid in the eyes of far-sighted children

trying to read the writing on the wall.

I don’t know how many years I told myself that

to justify the absurd futility

of labouring at this effortless discipline

of rolling an avalanche back up the cosmic mountain

like spiritual cornerstones

that keep falling to pieces

like planets in an asteroid belt

after every nervous breakdown

wipes out life on earth.

I wanted to find a way I wasn’t wasting my life

thinking it didn’t matter

that I was born lucky enough

to know what a failure success is

and how little fulfillment there is in an abundance

that isn’t shared.

And so many weren’t.

I lay down whatever I had in my hands at the time

like gifts at the eastern doors of the dead

before their ghosts left

with the geese in September

to let them know

at least I cared enough

to say farewell

before the first snowfall

wore white at the funeral

like a widow at a wedding.

Like the mourning weeds of words

on a page as white as this

that leaves no tracks in the snow

to say where it’s going

for fear the lost might follow the lost

when there are no other signs in sight.

So I looked to the stars

in the cold nightsky for guidance

thinking I was off the path

I was meant to be on

but their light went off in all directions

and I realized

that when I took my own eyes

for north on a compass

everywhere was the way home

but in the time it took to get there

I was already somewhere else

lightyears ahead of myself

like the rest of the universe.

And I concluded providentially if nothing else

it was my demonic way of shunning the good

for their own sake

and that maybe just maybe

even deep in the negative space of black matter

there beats a dark heart

that takes pity on the innocent

by deflecting their light away from it

like fireflies at the window of a starless night

inside an unlit furnace

ruminating in its own ashes

like a phoenix in an urn

as it bends its thoughts

of what to burn next

like space

and pours them out

like the hot clear glass

of gravitational lenses

into the eye-sockets of a diamond skull

with a commanding view of the universe

that doesn’t take things out of context.

But if you stare too long

into the sun that shines at midnight

your eyes will turn into eclipses

that will black out illumination

and you’ll see nothing more

than you did before you opened them.

You’ll never come to know

that blind people want to be understood

while those who can see

are trying to understand.

A pair of eyes to be sure.

But looking at each other

through opposite ends of the telescope.

Myriad images don’t make a symbol.

Verbal expression is not thought.

Most of your emotions

don’t take any notice of you.

A straight line is the quickest way

to miss the point

if it’s got one to come to

like a Q-ball at the end of a long shot.

Space is time

but it’s light that goes the distance

when time stops.

Seeing is being

and sight is a kind of love.

The future is as full of potential

in the emptiness

of the beggar’s cup

as it is in the expanding void

of the rich man’s enterprise

to keep it together like a universe

that isn’t goal-oriented enough

to stop reaching for stars

grasping at straws in oblivion.

Understand any one of these things well

and you’ll stop demeaning

the wild horse of your life

by trying to stick a bit in its mouth

whenever it spreads its wings.

Fathom any one of these things

like a fact to its very depths

until you run out of thoughts

like knots in your spinal cord

and you’ll stop wasting your time

trying to measure

the bottomless wellsprings of space.

You’ll sit down on the ground

like one of the sacred clowns

of providence

and have a good laugh

at the universe’s expense.

You’ll grow immense with intimacy

in an alien universe

that makes you feel right at home.

You’ll stop being the dark genius

who doesn’t recognize

the brilliance of your own star

and realize

that you might be the one who’s saying it

but it’s not your voice.

You’ll stop telling yourself things

you stole from everyone else

like spit out of the mouths you drink from

as if they were holy grails

and not the moon-scum

your prophetic skull leaves on the waters

like Orpheus bobbing your way to Lesbos

on a dark night sea

holding your head out before you like a lantern

to see where you’re going 

after your dismemberment.

Things will start coming true ahead of time

and you’ll be a lot happier than you are now

if you’ll shut up like a dead language

without a muse or inspiration 

and start listening

to children playing in the distance

as if illusion didn’t lie to their eyes

or reality impair their vision.

The universal hiss of creation

like a water drop

scalded on a hot stove-top

or the afterbirth of an innocent snake

that laboured to give birth

to a cosmic mistake

not of its own making 

will turn into a cool background bliss

that is always there

because once you return

to your beginnings

beyond the Big Bang

before you had a face

fourteen and a half billion years later

all of time is dwarfed

by the immensity of a single moment.

When you take away yesterday

and give up on tomorrow

it can be no other day than this

forever and ever and ever and ever.

And you’re spontaneously happy about it.

You don’t need to repress your sorrows to express your joy.

The green bough blossoms

and the dead branch sheds the moon

And you won’t know what to say about it

because neither meaning nor choice

however sublime the view

from the windows they’re standing in

know how to play creatively with your voice

like the children down below

right under their noses

making themselves up on the go

like all forms of life in the universe

one world after another without end

as if they were imagining things.

And yet you’ll still know somehow

whether you’re lost in the labyrinth

of a stolen starmap

that’s trying to second-guess where you want to go

or you’re blazing like a lighthouse on a stormy coast

just offshore from Egypt

you’ll sense 

the supple absolute of change

that burns in the masonjar of your heart

like the firefly you’re trying to see by

when your blood walks alone with you at night

is the whole of cosmic enlightenment in a haiku of insight

that delights in the profundity of your darkness

when it breaks into stars

that look into your eyes for guidance

and see for themselves

where everyone is hiding in Orion

waiting to surprise the pharoah

with an afterlife

only the crazy wisdom of a child

could imagine getting lost in forever.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

that stared too long into midnight sun

 

vision

 

seeing being

own