I'VE AGED LIKE SNOW

I’VE AGED LIKE SNOW

I’ve aged like snow

rounded by my own thawing.

Something’s gone cold inside

like the grave pit of a jewel

that rose from the dead

and left this terrible absence

as if one my eyes were missing.

But when I think about it

a minute or two longer than I should have

when has it ever not been so?

Cold, but I can still burn.

And not one candle in a niche at a time

but whole constellations arrayed

to squander their radiance on nothing

as if they were showing time and space

how to party.

And I’m not deaf to the big foghorns

groaning like dying dinosaurs

on the Pacific coasts of consciousness

that remind me time is passing

like an island in the night

I might be marooned on.

Desolate assessments of what’s ahead

through a long winter of solitude.

The worst lies are the ones

people stick in their ears like fingers

not to hear the cries of the drowning.

So I don’t. I listen.

But sometimes my helplessness drives me so mad

not knowing what else to do

I start dancing with the fireflies on shore

until I’m so tranced out

for one more night or two

I feel like a great bonfire of life

that set its last lifeboat ablaze

to shout out into the darkness

at the first star I see

break the gloom

like a ship on the distant horizon,

for the sake of the fireflies, the dance,

the drowning, the island and me,

Hey, we’re here.

We’re over here.

For God’s sake, we’re over here.

But after awhile I return to my senses

and it's just one more wavelength after another

like the widening wake of something that’s passed,

washing the bodies of people

I used to know and love

like blood of my blood

and flesh of my flesh

up on the beach

like a cargo of immigrant dolls

who’d paid for their passage to the other side

where things were supposed to be more beautiful

but the way things went down

couldn’t swim for their lives.

With sorrow and anger

for what’s happened to them

not caring if it’s the right attitude or not,

only that it’s human,

I gather them up one by one

and sit them around what remains of the fire

to dry off and get their bearings again

like a zodiac that lost it for awhile,

and I talk to them

about all those trivial things I remember

I never thought would mean

more than the world to me now.

PATRICK WHITE

THE SIMPLE UNFORCED ACTIONS OF A MAN ALONE AT NIGHT

THE SIMPLE UNFORCED ACTIONS OF A MAN ALONE AT NIGHT

The simple unforced actions of a man alone at night

for hours by himself

when nothing of the world

calls upon him to be anyone but himself.

He does small trivial things

like replacing the red flint in his Zippo lighter

in preparation for lifelong cosmic projects

he’s meant to execute since boyhood.

Even the windows don’t place any demands upon him

though he looks for the occasional star

above the roofs of the buildings across the street

and whose lights are still on

in the rooms of those the darkness hurts the worst.

He micromanages his body

hair by hair,

tamps back his cuticles

to get a better view of the moonrise

over the horizons of his thumbnails

the way a man who’s read too many good books

proofreads his garden in the morning.

He enjoys a porous intimacy with the night

as it soaks into his bones

like lamp oil into western red cedar

and deepens the darkness

with mahogany poetry

almost the colour of blood.

He makes a sandwich.

He fills a coffee cup.

It’s winter and he feels

the demotic inflections of temperature

as the air gives up its pretense

of being cooly debonair

for more peasant aspirations

to turn the heat up higher.

The sublimities of three a.m.

The last streetcleaner and garbage truck have gone by,

perfecting the desolation of the deserted street.

Not quite peace, not quite emptiness,

the sweetness of the hour suggests

it doesn’t matter what it is.

Absolute solitude, thickening silence,

as if the darkness were a way

of mourning the death of stars

most people never even saw shining

so deeply into their eyes while they slept

they penetrated their dreams

and touched their hearts in a way

that didn’t wake them up.

If anyone were to ask him

what he felt like right now

he’d say he felt like space.

Unmoved somehow

without inhibiting anyone’s passage.

He’d tell you that it isn’t time that moves.

That the greatest gift

anyone could give to the world

is their stillness.

As if you were returning your cup

to the river you drew it from.

He stares at the small red Zen lamp

with its friendly infernal glow

embossed with the leaves and seeds of autumn

like fossils in the Burgess Shale

next to the recovering snakeplant in the window.

Blasting caps and fireflies of poetry

go off in his mind like images and insights

of distant lightning and thunder,

and though he feels like an empty bus terminal

he knows how stupid it is

to wait for something that’s spontaneous.

Let that live that can.

Something will sooner or later.

It isn’t true that nature abhors a vacuum

or nihilo ex nihilo fecit, nothing

comes of nothing.

Nature adores a vacuum

the way a poet is possessed by a muse.

Or some vandal

with a genius for disobedience

passing by a freshly painted wall

loves his spray bomb

just like any other Neanderthal.

He lights a violet candle

and a stick of patchouli incense

as if both were of vital importance.

The ghosts of the cigarette-smoke in the room

gravitate like gulls

toward the lighthouse like a seance

only too happy to go up in flames

and attain a state of perfect combustion.

If the world weren’t constantly

emptying itself out

like the moon from its skullcup

or a man alone at night in a small town

waiting for the next star to appear

between the slow clouds in his window

there’d be no more room for inspiration.

Even a fallen gate hanging on by a hinge

in the untended starfields

lets more in than it can pour out.

There’s an absence of people and things

that were there and aren’t anymore

and that emptiness tastes

of the inconsolable sadness

of a desert that mothers mirages

only to outlive them all.

And there’s the emptiness

of a confined space

when it reminds time

that it is also eternity.

And that can sever

and shock you like a knife

you just pulled on yourself

to keep your distance from death.

And then there’s the unconditioned clarity

of a nothingness that holds you up

like a mirror to your own nature

and says put a face to this.

And poems emerge like enlightened liars

that are true to their own

knowing that’s all there is.

PATRICK WHITE