THE LAST DRAFT

THE LAST DRAFT

There never was a way I could say it;

impossible from the first. The night

opened my mouth and poured its stars

down the well of my throat so I could say it in light,

but all that came out when I tried to sing

was silence and darkness

and a solitude that pawned the wedding-ring

that slipped from the finger of the wind

like a punctuation mark.

I envied the leaves that could say it in rain,

and the stones freaked by fool’s gold

so much like my own brain

but able to say it with ease

like the birds in the morning trees

shuddering with eloquence.

Women could say it, and children, and dogs,

and even the spider could play it

on its lethal guitar,

and the moon by stealthy increments

draining its cup to the lees,

but I could not say it, even after

years of study and extravagant teachers,

everything ended in the cruel laughter

of clones and clowns aghast at my ignorance,

even the pictographs of the mute bones in the cemetery articulate

compared to the dumb show

that betrayed my grief and shame and fate.

I implored the sky to let the words flow

that would set me free, release me

from this lifelong agony

I’ve endured like a downed powerline,

but only my own voice returned

without a branch and leaf, without a sign.

I grew weary of form, of emptiness,

of roses that curse and thorns that bless;

I collapsed all opposites

into enlightened oxymorons,

no polarities or contradictions anywhere,

and shrank to the size of the universe

in forward and reverse, random borons

the only gravity that called me

back to earth, this interminable birth

that hasn’t yet evolved a mouth

that can say it. Now

I don’t know who I am

or what I am

and I’m aging. And I’ve forgotten

what it is I wanted to say

that seemed so important, so pressing,

so absolutely engaging;

maybe something about the mystery

of the human heart

wounded by its own beginning

turning into the history of art,

but I’m guessing. Here

among these immensities,

there’s a window, and a star above the moon

and a fable of blood

riddled with intensities.

PATRICK WHITE