REDUCED TO COSMIC INSIGNIFICANCE
Reduced to cosmic insignificance
by the splendour of the view
I give the world its due magnificence
by wiping the mirror clean of my existence
so I don’t soil the lamp with soot
or cling like oil to the shoreline
like an eclipse that leaked out of a well
or a thick black serpent haemmoraging snake blood.
I don’t stand here
staring up at the stars
like a new millenium of meaning
trying to express things
that haven’t been heard before
like a stranger at the door
flipping through panicked grammars
to let me know the house is on fire
and the nearest clean water’s on the moon.
When you’re not bound by anything
you’re open.
When there’s no truth to seek.
Nothing hidden.
Nothing disclosed.
No longing in the fire.
No fulfillment in the ashes.
You don’t need to know who you are
to be truly human
because the moment you say you’re this
you’re contradicted by that
and you’re not anymore.
You’re drawing up plans
for a building
that already stands before you
like the reflection of the Alhambra on water
like the bones of your body
that arose out of the starmud
to frame you on that cornerstone of blood
that everything else rests upon
like a pyramid by a river that floods
or the wellspring of an oasis in the desert
far far far to the west of the sun
where Venus burns
like a white mare
in the high fields
and just to look up
is to answer the summons
like a Libyan wind from the north.
The universe isn’t trying to reach out to us.
It isn’t trying to preach to us.
It isn’t trying to teach us
anything we didn’t want to learn
about this turn of events
in the deep dark concern
we have for ourselves
when the mirrors turn their backs on us
as if to say
see for yourself
how much has to go on without you.
Selflessness isn’t what’s left
when something that was there is gone.
It isn’t a desert that’s left
after you’ve tasted the water in the oasis
and seen through the mirage that’s been swept away
along with your thirst for delusion.
It isn’t the nihilistic emptiness
of the mind calling out to itself for long years
without ever hearing the echo of its own voice
come back to itself
like a dove
with a sprig of olive in its beak
it carries around with it
as if peace
were the only place left to land.
Selflessness isn’t the taste of the cup
after you’ve drunk the wine.
Selflessness isn’t something to be
something to see
something to become
something to understand
or something you can resist
anymore than you can resist space
because it is the non-existence
of everything that is as it is
inconceivably arrayed before you
like the immeasurable measure of your own mind.
When you’ve lost your way in the dark
and the silence isn’t a friend of yours
and you’re asking the stars
where your eyes have gone
send out the blind
because they’ll find them
faster than those who think they can see.
Dark matter enlightens the ignorance of lucidity.
Dark matter can be things before they happen.
Dark matter is the mother of the world
who gave up her identity
so you could delude yourself into believing
you’re not the same as her to whom
you’re bonded like time to space
whatever you do to escape her embrace.
Dark matter knows
by the emptiness in her heart and womb
that the universe
isn’t a precondition of life
but life is a precondition of the universe.
The dark mother’s emptiness is always full
like a woman who has lost much
and gives more
because her suffering is thornless
and the waves go on forever
like mystic oceans in the rose
when she sends the light out
on a long sea journey at night
like a widow standing
at an expanding window
abandoned by the view
thinking of what she gave birth to.
New lamps for old.
Blue-white T Tauri stars
for dreaded black holes.
Intimately fresh wounds
she mends with cosmic scars.
PATRICK WHITE
