SINCE I LAST WROTE TO YOU

for Alysia

Since I last wrote to you

I told a Napoleonic goldfish

who thought she ruled the shark bowl

to take my job and shove it

as the measure of a man

who still hasn’t acquired the habit

of eating shit

and calling it his daily bread.

I’ve gone back full time to my art

and now I’m eating paint

and enduring the tedium of terror

in a dangerous life

struggling to pay the rent

as I paint and write

knowing I am bereft of the elements of life

for refusing to be economically deprived of my freedom.

If you’re never hungry

you’ll never know what it means to eat.

I laugh blackly like a raw martini

at the cutting edge of irony

when I think of my art as a Zen oxymoron

that’s discovered a way of starving

that bears fruit.

I can taste my food better now

and if I don’t waste anything

it’s a much happier experience

when it isn’t done out of principle.

I count the probability of the number of years

I have left to live

the springs and autumns

I have yet to become

on my fingers and toes.

And I try not to let my disappointment

in the humanity of demons

keep my heartwood

from blowing tree-rings up to heaven

just to give the angels something to crow about.

I’m alone and sad most of the time

and lately I’ve noticed my solitude

flirting with the idea

of turning into a conviction.

Women approach me

with the ambivalence

of a koan in their gut

they can’t resolve.

But it’s not a good idea

if you’re trying to get laid

to baffle the mystery

with your estrangement

and I strive real hard

as often as I can

not to spook

the middle-aged youth

by being a younger man.

I greet guests warmly when they arrive

but it’s rare that I grieve for anyone

when they leave

like most of what was left out of the conversation

we didn’t have

about who among us was telling the truth.

It’s been awhile since I’ve heard a good lie

that didn’t bore me.

I’m an all-inclusive recluse

more interested in studying the psychology of time

as I get to know it experentially

as the immediate intimacy

of the serial-killer at my throat.

I’ve decultified my work

to keep it from turning into a career

but even as we speak

five poems are being translated into Spanish.

And upon learning

I was the last poet laureate of Ottawa

and after me there was no deluge

they could find to fill

the empty ark of my shoes

I emptied on the mountain top:

or I bruised everyone’s feelings so much

like a pebble in their boot

that turned into an avalanche

I endangered my species with extinction.

Whatever the case

I feel the mystic glee of blacklight fireflies

igniting randomly

like stars and lighthouses

I’ve never listened to

about looking for shelter

from the storm of dark energy

that is released by knowing I’m the last of my kind.

And my spirit and mind

have missed you too

as the months have gone by

as if the colour of my blood in autumn

were missing from my palette

and my heart were an urgent artist

who wanted to get out

and paint with you in Kamloops

where the rivers meet in a sacred place.

I’ve never wanted facebook

to be all that I know of your beautiful face

or the starmaps of our cosmic loveletters

to be all that I know of the grace of your shining.

I can still see the stars mirrored in the flowers

in our gateless garden on the moon

where the roses that fell on their thorns

have healed well enough

to go on blooming without us.

I think I felt more like a weed than the waterlily

I wanted to bring into your life

like a paper ship

I floated down the mindstream

to see if my favourite siren

had any use for an empty lifeboat like me.

On the worst of days

when misery gloated

that pleasure might be a principle

but it was a fundamental law of the universe

even as a shipwreck going down

I could still be entranced

by the memory of your singing.

You get a different view of moonlight

when you look at it

with the eye of the sea

from the bottom.

And now once again

your voice pearls me

like a grain of sand

you can see in the universe

if you look closely enough

under the stones

where the angels keep their ancient places.

And I couldn’t be more delighted

that you still love me

and that your heart aches

like an unanswered telephone

or a wounded seance

when my ghost doesn’t answer my absence.

I’ve lain here like a dead seabed on the moon

for so long waiting for you

to pour your ocean into me

I was beginning to think

the vast expanse of my interminable emptiness

was nothing more

than the homely measure

of a cracked teacup

the little I’ve known of you

that was wet

kept leaking out of.

And it would take a great void

to embrace the depth of your waters

and a clear sky immense enough

not to inhibit the flight of your white clouds

and even if my feelings

were to break

like telescopic mirrors on your rocks

it would take a great three-eyed stargazer like me

not to see that you can’t point

to a piece of me

like the firefly chandelier

of a shattered constellation

that was too spaced out

to fit into anyone’s zodiac

that doesn’t still reflect the whole you

on any good seeing night.

I look at you

as I look at the stars

and you’re the lucid muse

of what’s radiantly possible

deep in the dark secret heart of the improbable.

And I want to reach out

like the uppermost branches

in the crown of an inspired tree

and touch you on the cheek

as if my fingertips

were a chaos

of falling apple bloom.

I want to fall asleep with you

and share the same dream

that summons the waterbirds

and scatters the Japanese plum

like loveletters everywhere

under the eyelids of the wind.

PATRICK WHITE