I LEFT THE SCENE BECAUSE
I left the scene because after long discipline
and the labour of many mirrors
I wanted to get the careerism out of my poetry
and return to the unbrokered relationship
I had with the muse who had me
when I was sixteen sitting
precipitously on Heartbreak Hill
not caring whether the stars knew
I was there or not
because it was more than enough that they were.
I wanted to end my apprenticeship to literary owls
editors publishers agents poet-tasters court-jesters
and the quarterly reviews of the gleemen
who made a mockery of the blood sacrifices
they watered down like Druids
that had never taken a life
in the name of anything that ever mattered
to the talented or untalented alike.
I wanted to get away from the merry-go-rounds
who made a hobby-horse of Pegasus
and kept asking me
how many books I had published now
though it was doubtful they’d even read one
all the way through
and the only answer I could give them
was I was the fucking Library of Alexandria.
Now watch me burn it to the ground.
I don’t think it’s true you always kill the thing you love
but I knew too many who had buried themselves in books
to prove they did
while those they loved
went right on living without them.
I left the scene because
when I wrote
too many doctorates
tried to crawl up into the womb
to monitor the birth of the baby
by prying its petals open
before it was due to be born.
Because the waters of life
like the wellsprings of Parnassus
in Macedonia
before Helicon in Boeotian Greece
switched to hippocrene
can’t be approached like a fish farm.
Because I’m from B.C.
and I know you have to be willing to leap up stream
with the wisdom and grace and courage
of a wild salmon
through a gauntlet of real grizzlies
if you want to be summoned by the ancient mystery
to the sacred pools of your own creativity
where everything begins and ends
like the waterclocks of inspiration
generation after generation.
I left the scene because
too many periodicals were coming on
like voice coaches to the nightingales
who submitted their vocals
to the editorial policies
of peacocks who sang a lot worse than they did.
I left the scene because
you can’t live like a maggot
and write like a butterfly
and even if you can ‘t find
much that’s noble about your calling anymore
it’s still not an investment portfolio
with stocks in Poetry Chicago.
I liked the awards I won.
I liked the books I published
without exception.
I liked the provincial and federal writing grants.
I liked the reading fees
such as the one I’m getting here tonight.
I liked the dinner I had with Max.
I liked the planes and the cars
the private homes
the reasonable hotels
that people put me in or on
and I liked the way people
well-meaning enough
would lie to me enthusiastically
about how my name would last forever
as long as there was a Canadian literature
that could stand up to the weather.
I liked the attention
and needed it
and I never met an audience
I didn’t like
if they’d let me.
I liked the radio interviews
with big studio dressing rooms
with cosmetically lit mirrors for my voice
but I’m still more than a little ambivalent
about the visual effects
they laced my voice with like acid
to make the documentaries
more interesting than my life.
I liked the artists who did the poster-poems
for most of the poetry readings in Ottawa for free for years
and the back up guitarists
like the Roddy Elias Jazz Trio
and this triune expression of musical experience
that’s coming up shortly behind me here.
I liked the intelligently generous restauranteurs
who were gracious enough
to give me a chance to read above
the sounds of falling spoons and crashing plates.
I liked the man who passed the hat
at the end of every reading
like a collection plate
that made me feel
if I stood at this pulpit long enough
I’d get to be the leader of a church.
I liked the losing and the finding and the search
for inspiration among the covens
and the choirs of fallen angels
who showed me all the things you can do with fire
that have nothing to do with global warming
which isn’t a function of natural desire.
I liked sitting alone on a runway in Terrace
on a cross country book tour
surrounded by mountains and ice
wondering how anything could gain enough altitude
without being stoned out of its mind
to avoid a collision with the peak moments of your life
like a decision that isn’t yours to make
and you’re not quite sure
whether you’re going to die or not
nor for whose sake
or in the name of what
when you remember
and this is your last best hope
you’re an integral part of Canadian Literature
and you’re going to live forever
as long as you can clear the Rockies and the weather
and get your landing gear up in time
like a duck flying over a duck blind.
I liked the vegetarian hosts
who let me smoke at some readings
because they said they liked my work so well
they didn’t have the heart
to make a demon like me
go through nicotine withdrawal
in the name of art
and gave me the breathing space
I need as a poet
to read my poetry
though I took great care
not to blow the smoke in their face.
I liked the way I was adopted
by exiles in the capitol of the country
I was born into like a changeling
by the Arabs and Chileans.
I liked the special connections I had
to Calabria and Arezzo.
I liked editing a poetry magazine.
I liked publishing other people’s poetry books.
I liked having a talk-show
and being an artificial life support system
to prevent guests from inhaling too much dead air
so they could talk live on the radio.
I liked pulling into the Canadian Tire Gas Bar
on highway 7 just before midnight
and being recognized
three years after I quit broadcasting
by the sound of my voice alone
by an overly enthusiastic gas-jockey
who thought I was some kind of big shot
and I wanted to say hey, buddy,
do yourself a big favour
and get a life of your own
because I like being heard
but that doesn’t always mean
I’m worth listening to
or that the noise I make
is many more wavelengths longer than yours.
Or the acoustics of your dick
are merely the hollow echo
of mine that roars by comparison.
Anyone can wake the valley up
with a bull horn.
But it takes a rooster with real class
to crow softly,
knowing the rose likes to sleep in.
I liked it all.
The Blue Gardenia, The Wildflower,
the aging nightowls of L’Hibou,
the legends of Mandrex and alcohol
that made the mice feel farcical.
I liked having as many detractors as I did friends.
I liked being asked to be poet laureate
and have a Jewish sister insist upon it
after sticking up for the Palestinians
and being reviewed
as the White Ayatollah of Ottawa
in the Ottawa Citizen
when in fact
I thought of myself
as a kind of throw back to Mephistopheles
with a host of demi-gods
and black-hearted magicians for friends.
I liked the wild witchy beauty of the women
who loved me like a finishing school
for fucked-up creative females
and took the madness I embodied to heart
and made it their own
to give themselves a good start in art
with my blessing.
And they liked the way that was o.k. with me.
Anything for poetry.
Even the empty doorway
they left me to remember them by.
And I do.
Gratefully.
For having enriched my solitude immeasurably.
But for all that I liked roosting
with the crows and peacocks
the swans and the larks
the sparrows and nightingales and seagulls
in the sacred groves of poetry
I couldn’t get this cosmic hiss out of my head
this white noise
this multiversal whisper
from the afterbirth of creation
that kept suggesting
there was no point in making a Big Bang
if it didn’t turn into a universe.
So I looked for space.
I looked for time.
I returned to my potential
I looked for cheap rent
on a small town apartment
where I could spill paint on the floor
and write myself to death
without anyone coming to the door
to tell me how much I had to offer other people
though I wasn’t aware of the fact that they’d even asked.
I wanted to take a bath in my own grave
alone with the moon by an unnamed lake
to renew my innocence
among the scarecrows and voodoo dolls
I refeathered like a phoenix in the fall
with burning leaves of sumac
on the last pyre I had to spend
on getting closer to the stars than I’ve ever been.
I left the scene because
longing and silence and solitude
are the three water birds I collaborate with the most
when I want to say what’s in my heart.
I left the scene because
only the night and the hills
and the wind and the fields
and the wildflowers whose names
are poems in and of themselves
and the six thousand unattainable stars
that I aspire to like women I’ll never have,
though they’re happy enough
to turn themselves out like muses
who like to marry men on death row,
reminded me of how
refreshingly insignificant I am
to anything that’s going on with them
like a big-hearted, good-natured ghost
they feel free enough to call upon
any time they want
and that’s what they like about me the most.
PATRICK WHITE
