I LIKE THE FLUX AND FLOW

I LIKE THE FLUX AND FLOW

 

I like the flux and flow

the turn stand and turn again

the strophe antistrophe and epode of my mind

looping back on itself like the retrograde motion of Mars.

I like the way it steps on my toes when it dances.

And the sudden flashs of lightning insight

way out over a dark sea

that doesn’t depend upon life

for its creativity

or night for its dreams

that’s how praeternaturally old they are.

Dogen Zenji said learning wisdom is learning space.

I’ve lived six decades

and I still don’t know the face I had before I was born.

And I’ve spent years in a library of mirrors looking.

Nada. Zip. Absolute Kelvin.

Not a negative space but always the same nothing.

Zero.

My favourite simulacrum.

But if you add me to one

it’s ten times bigger

and if you do it twice

it grows by a hundredfold

but if you take me away

nothing’s ever diminished.

Have you noticed yet

that who what when where why

all begin with the pictographic letter for water and waves?

W?

It was a small clue to a big question I had asked

and that’s why I flow along with the mindstream

and let it make me up as it goes along

like the lyric of an autumn leaf

that delights in the supreme eloquence

of not knowing where it’s going.

And just as a straight line in calculus

is only a special form of a curve

don’t forget that ice has a way of flowing too.

I’ve seen glaciers in tears

and silver droplets running from the eyes in the mirror.

I’ve been on nightseas that heaved with emotion for the moon

like providential tides sweeping across a flood plain of shadows

that didn’t lead on to anything at all.

A little bit of matter in a lot of water.

Fleshy vegetables in the primordial soup.

A bag of water carries a waterclock in its womb

and gives birth to us.

Water learned to walk on land

long before the fishers of men set foot on the sea.

So I am exalted by the fleeting harmonies of the riverine voice

that keeps calling my name out in her sleep

without expecting anyone to answer.

But I haven’t the heart to wake her up and romance her

when we’re already as close as we’re ever going to be.

That’s why meaningless relationships have always made the most sense to me.

Because they’re as free as a river after it makes the sea

to be whatever they want to be.

They can be clouds around the mountain.

They can be a rainbow or a moondog.

They can dance under chandeliers of tears.

Or they can overturn the torch

and put the fire out like a dangerous passion

in a flammable season

trying to find a phoenix in ashes of a church.

You can waltz like a synthesis of a thesis and its antithesis in three four time

as if you were dancing with yourself like water

trying to keep pace with your flowing

or you can mistake a dry root

for a stairwell up to heaven

and transcend yourself like a bucket

that broke into blossom

like an oasis on the moon

that’s just raised you up to its lips

like the original language of life

that gave us a voice

and said learn to speak for yourself

as if you were saying it to me.

And it’s one of the sublime joys of a playful life full of sorrows that I do.

I say it like rain in the mouth of the waterlilies

gaping like dry grails

to be green again

in the eyes of an autumn lover.

I follow myself down like a watersnake through a rain gutter

and foul myself with the corpses of the cherry blossoms in the sewer

like Orpheus singing for Eurydice in Hades

looking for a way out of here

that doesn’t shun them like mirrors

that haven’t learned to recognize themselves

in their own reflections

for having no back to turn on any experience.

No dark side that wasn’t part of a perfect whole.

Even when my spirit rises empty-handed from the dead

like the last breath 

of vaporous stars on the Road of Ghosts

that runs through the constellation of Lyra

like a wishbone between the Eagle and the Swan

I am still this afterlife of water

pouring myself out like a nightbird

ruining my voice on an old song that no one can sing twice.

Look how Zeus slaps Rhea’s tit away in a cave in Crete

and the Milky Way streams through the firmament

like holy oil on the foreheads of those who look up to their mothers.

What do you see that’s ungodly?

What do you see that’s divine?

You were born from that ocean of star-brine

like a comet from the sign of its coming

to fulfill your own prophecy

like a water-snake swallows the moon like a cosmic egg

and a dragon flys out of its mouth

as if the healing fires of inspiration

were the only way

to answer the wounded silence

of the sad birdmother who gave birth to us

like wings and words 

in your own voice.

Do this

and a shorebound swan of stone

will swim out to midstream

like a third extreme of water

and without leaving a trace

shake its feathers off like moonlight

and disappear into the night

as if it were following its own calling

as life is summoned by life in this

like summer and Cygnus

into the darker realms of an innerspace

waking and sleeping

where we whisper into our own ears

as life does

as god does

as the dark abundance of the abyss does

waiting for the light to wake up

to its own bright vacancy

or a shell speaks of the ocean

like one half of a starmap

to the mystic lustre of a hidden treasure

without measure

where X marks the spot

like a secret worth keeping to yourself

like a parrot with an eyepatch on your shoulder

keeping an eye on things like a security camera.

Infinite riches in a little room!

Understand this

and you’ll experience the original bliss

of knowing that your life is

the whole of this expanding universe without limit

in the eye of the primordial atom

that knows it had it made from the very beginning

like a rumour of light in the distance.

 

PATRICK WHITE