NIGHTBIRD ON A WINTER BRANCH

NIGHTBIRD ON A WINTER BRANCH

Nightbird on a winter branch.

Dark blossom of the new moon,

Last kiss on the eyelids of the dead

As the snow falls like apple bloom.

I see you’ve left the door ajar:

The backdoor of an eclipse

To let the first crescent of the light out.

The sacred syllable of the mistfits

Lost in the silence and the solitude

You raise like heretical mystics into songs

That only you alone can sing

So that each in their homelessness belongs

To the false dawn of the same secret

They weep over like empty lockets

That stole the moon from their windows

As they burned at the stake, rockets

Martyred in the fire of the holy books

That inspire them deeper into exile

This late at night far from anywhere

Distance is measured by the mile

And not the wingspan of the light-years

It’s taken me to write this.

Like a bird that flew out of the darkness,

That left no trace of the witness

As it blew a kiss of sudden insight.

A word in passing from the dead

About who’s behind the death mask

Of the snow that’s covering my head

Like the polar ice cap of a planet

With the prophetic wisdom of a skull.

Life in the birthmark of the new.

Death in the harvest of the moon at full.

Emptiness devoid of all light.

The first sign of renewal in the urn

Of a nightbird on a winter branch.

Diamonds of ice and insight that burn

Like coal in the eyes of a snow man

With the passion of a phoenix born

A star in the cold furnace of the sky.

Where every passage is a rite of return

That hides its brightest jewels

blossoming like enlightenment on the wing

In the dark ore of a nightbird

When a deathmask opens its mouth to sing.

PATRICK WHITE