AVIOMANCY
And
the grace of the returning Canada geese in the night,
the
sentinel response of their approach
in
the high volumes of the moon-soaked night,
the
plaintive creaking of an ancient hinge
at
the slow turning of the urgent planet in my hand
undoing
the door and the threshold
of
another spring night on earth, the ghost of the willow,
a
resurgent fountain among the black geometry
of
the tumultuous roofs of Perth,
and
the luminous fleets and crucifixion kites
of
the emergency eyes of the window-glow in the darkness,
almost
museums from the outside, an archives
of
compendious fates from which the curtains seldom part or rise.
And
the glorious, more concentrated stars of winter
now
the ragged standards of a remnant army
in
organized retreat, as the rustic proclivities
of
the shepherd moons of Jupiter approach zenith, my blood
scored
by the silver ploughs of sudden valleys
monitored
by the demonic laughter of barbaric echoes,
I
cherish the exotic pathos of my urbane exclusions of joy,
neither
young in the shining prospect of the greening mirror,
nor
old in the bellweather of the ascendant. No longer summoned
to
the seditious beauty of conspiratorial orchards
that
whispered to me like women complicit with the wind,
no
longer driven to madness by the veils of promissory assassins,
my
heart is yet a habit of freedom, the unmantled ashes
of
a vagrant phoenix in the urns of inflammable sanities.
And
though the dead pass me around
like
the souvenir and rumour of a single heartbeat,
the
curiosity and relic of a maverick wave of life
that
once broke like the shadow of a man
on
the immaculate shores and igneous chastity
of
the imperturbable moon, I am not haunted
by
the lascivious curiosity of their cold fingers
nor
swayed from my abject apostasy by the suave prophets
of
a spurious exhumation. What is dead within me,
the
burnt offerings of pagan autumns deposed by a change of stars
does
not entreat an untimely season to rise
but
confides in me the courage
to
risk it all again, all the faces and the hearts
and
the exquisite transformations that sometimes
saw
me born without eyes, and the dangerous sorrows
that
turned into the sullen dragons of a slow agony
sowing
terrible visions in the wake of their pain,
and
the pornographic solitude of godless atoms,
and
the chronic doubt that could only be countered
by
doubting the doubt that obsessed me:
I
was irrelevant, purposeless, vain, alone;
do
what I will to divert the course of the river, achieve, attain
anything,
long eloquently for the best, drunk
on
the moon’s reflection, or curse the stone that bore me,
I
lived to be worthy of a salvation that didn’t exist.
I
founded a religion on the utterance of a clown,
and
of all that followed me I alone was damned,
the
ferocious heretic of my fanatic interdictions, confounded by the
grave
without
a firefly, while everything else
rose
from the toils of death like a heathen rose.
And
nothing has changed but the acceptance of myself
as
the nothing by acclamation
on
the other side of assent and denial. I sat
like
an amputee on a throne in the middle of a crossroads
that
led nowhere, that offered no departures or escapes,
tighter
than a straitjacket, an armless compass and clock
alarmed
by the approach of forever and the improbability
of
waking up from the dream with anywhere to go.
In
my own eyes, I was the sad visitation
of
a black comet in shallow summer skies
that
portended no good, without a will for malice,
to
anyone befuddled by shadows down below.
My
radiance, uranium, I burned to be someone else
on
more intimate terms with oblivion, someone
on
a lower rung of the ladder of emanations, below the salt
at
the elemental table, less catastrophically alive.
In
my search to turn gold back into lead,
I
had gone too far and the oceans that confronted me
were
shoreless virgins that had never known the wind,
waveless
expanses of immaculate silence
that
sang deeper than sirens on the only bloodrock
in
an infinite sea colder than any conceivable tomorrow
that
might be born of the view. Unbelievable
even
to me, the eras of alienation that fixed me there,
the
depths of my immersion in the void, the terrible harmony
of
my lifeless actions as I planted a standard
in
the name of nothing known to me
but
the fame of a useless conceit. My utter defeat.
And
now this afterlife of returning geese in another spring
that
divine their way from star to star
only
to disappear like a passing enthusiasm
into
the unanswerable recesses of a damaged heart
that
doesn’t run to the window to look up. And it’s late,
already
a delinquent solitude beyond hope, and there’s release and fear
in
the serenity of waiting among the unborn dawns of a world
that
never happened to anyone but me
as
forbidden mystics look for their eyes in the ashes. There’s peace
and
an astounding abundance in the empty hand
that
grasps at nothing, and a wisdom that can’t be learned
in
the vision of a madman who knows he can’t return
to
any aspiration of the prodigal year
that
absurdly flags him down to ask for directions.
PATRICK
WHITE
