NOT A GUEST OF TIME, BUT A HOST

NOT A GUEST OF TIME, BUT A HOST

Not a guest of time, but a host, be, now

bright August stars shining above the white gold

of the riverine wheat that trembled like skin

when the wind blew on it like a lover

to cool it like bread on a windowsill

and it shuddered with light. Stand, kneel, bend

stand in the doorway of your house

like a skeleton that’s been fleshed out

by your own hospitality, and invite time in

like a runaway emotion on a homeless rainy night

and say, yes, stay; heal, eat, sleep, dream,

laugh, breathe, cry, dance with me

until you know it’s time to leave,

to kiss the wind good-bye

as it showers you with seeds and words

like a billion sleeping stars, each

a blessing on the threshold

of a world of your own

that can’t be born

until you lay your eyes upon it,

rain and light, fire and frost,

and they wake up to themselves,

like water to the memory of a distant mirage.

Not a guest of time, but a host,

with your arms as open and wide

as all that falls between

the first and last crescents of the moon,

embrace time expansively within

as the youngest caprice of the sublime

and root it like an orchard in your mind

that’s going to grow like the lucky day

you discover it’s all one day,

into a riot of enlightenment

when it gives its blossoms up to the wind.

And it comes to you,

the kiss of a beautiful farewell,

time is bliss, time is life, time

is the sad soft mushroom of cool lips

pressed against the forehead

of your prophetic skull

saying thanks for letting me stay awhile,

thanks for the future you shared with me

under the eclipse of your eyelids

when you offered me shelter under your roof

like a wood violet under the duff of your leaves.

Not a guest of time, but a host,

welcome the prodigal into your life,

a green bough to a red-winged blackbird,

a dead branch to the wayward blossom of the moon,

and offer the candle of your flesh to a fire

that didn’t want to dance with anyone else.

Account time among the companions

of your silence and your solitude

who grieve with you

at the dry wishing well

you’re trying to fill with your tears

for all those things that never came true

and time whispers into your ear

gently removing your hands from your face

like the petals of a flower

whose time has come to bloom,

I am spring. I am

the most beautiful of lies that heal.

I am the wisdom

in the ashes of the dragons

who swallowed me whole

to bring the rain

like water to the dead seas of the moon.

Now is not just now.

It’s tomorrows that have come and gone,

yesterdays that have yet to be.

And you see, you understand,

time isn’t just a calendar

of grave stones in a cemetery

beside the rail road tracks;

it isn’t linear like that;

it isn’t Euclidean in the least.

It isn’t a superficial approach to space

trying to put a face on nothing.

It’s the night creek flowing

like a violin among the autumn aspens.

It’s the underground river

that sustains the secret garden in your heart

and sends you messages from time to time

like loveletters out of the darkness

that open like flowers and water birds.

The iris of the eye might be as beautiful

as the promise of gold

at the end of the rainbow,

but it’s the black hole of the pupil

that lets time in

like a porchlight that’s burnt out

to deepen its insight into stars and fireflies

as if it were asking for news

of a friend from afar.

Lavish your eyes upon time,

squander the generosity

of your passage upon it,

break bread with it

above the salt on the table,

let it be flesh of your flesh,

bone of your bone,

blood of your blood

and drink wine with it

as if you were both drinking

out of the same skull

that predicted one day you would

like spirits that know their own.

Don’t be the ghost

that comes when it’s called,

be the seance that summons time

to the table that throws away its crutches

and begins to shake and dance

and sing in tongues

that can taste spring in the air

like buds and birds

and wild columbine

like the antennae of a rock.

Don’t be the guest, be the host.

Offer time clean sheets and a bed

the dead have never slept in,

a wall with a painting on it

that was done by you

and a window with a view

that no one’s ever signed

as a work of their own,

and a key to the door of your home

you reforged from the swords of a clock

when you gave up your holy war of one

and went back to ploughing the moon

as the more vital of two absurdities.

Time is not the dark twin in the womb

of your own myth of origins

that brought death into the world

like the only known antidote

to the long hard labour

of the passing years

you spent mining diamonds in a snake pit.

Time is the wavelength of a jewel

that’s turning in your own light

like a planet around the sun,

a gold rush in a nugget of starmud

you found in your travels

on the dark side of the moon,

an eye that flows with the translucency

of water and air and fire

as if you could still see angels

walking on earth

among the daughters of men

and you were looking into the eyes

of everyone of them

vision after vision

of your own insight

into the fact

that time has no afterlife but you

to rely upon like Stonehenge,

the call of Canada geese

traversing the moon

like rosaries and caravans

or evergreens in the fall.

And the old woman

does not say I am old

and the old man

does not say I am weary.

No season younger

or older than another,

the light turned up,

the light turned down,

the stars don’t adjust their shining

to the day or the night

and time doesn’t run out of itself

like the prequel to eternity.

As I said, time has no afterlife

without you and sooner

is always later than you think.

Not a guest of time, but a host,

beckon time in off the road

as you would a stranger

in the lost country you call home;

teach it a language of your own

with a distinctly human accent,

why we might know an hour of bliss

and lament its passing for years,

why with all our meridians, sundials,

waterclocks, wristwatches and zodiacs

we live in such haste

and keep our eye precisely on

that we waste the most,

and yet we still can’t see

that the sun shines at midnight

and the stars and the shadows

are darkest at noon.

It’s been said that time

is an eckaksana, a thought moment,

as if thought had the lifespan of a gnat,

or that time is the sensation

of a gap between thoughts,

but I can’t subscribe to that

because if so we would have

drowned in the void a long time ago

though we’d never know it

or have these flashbacks

of our present and past lives

as we’re sinking

to get out of the way of our future.

If there are gaps, then

time is the bridge between them

that arcs over the mindstream

like a vertebra over a spinal cord

that flows beneath it

reflecting the underside of the overpass

so that the circle remain unbroken

and people can get to the other side,

coming and going.

Time is no more a numeral

than a tree is the name you give it.

It never has been

nor will ever be

two in the morning

or nine at night

or the seven ages of man

declining from his gold head down

to his clay feet

stuck in the starmud.

You are two in the morning.

You are nine at night.

When time wants to know

what it is

time looks at you

and you’re older than the universe

and the universe within and without

is a spontaneous array of endless beginnings

that happen all at once.

As you are

time is.

The star above the childhood

of the abandoned barn.

You waiting for your date to arrive

and the waiter

to get back with a candle

he forgot to place on the table.

The blonde willow

that stripped the dye from its hair

and wears it defiantly thin

with an orange tinge in the winter

against a tree line of dingy brunettes.

If you don’t make an enemy of time,

a doom’s day opponent

that’s always happening to you

from the outside

then you befriend

at one and the same time

your life as well

because there’s no difference

and both it and time

are always on your side

like your eyes are,

your mind is

that can see everything

but themselves

the way a lamp is lead

by a light that’s blind

to what you’re seeing

ahead and behind you

in all directions at once.

When the darkness you’re lost in

wants to take the measure

of how many lifespans and lightyears

it is between one thought and the next

one breath and another

where breath stops

to turn around

breathless in the moment

it consults a star like a clock

that always shining

with as many hands

as there are directions of prayer

directions of light

directions of time

rivers to cross

roads to walk

gates to open

guests to greet

or ways to guess where you’re going.

Time is music.

Time is the soul of space.

Your youth doesn’t age with you

into the available dimension of the future

and your death is already behind you

like a birth with a past

that’s not the guest of time

but the open-handed host

that leaves the door ajar

to receive the pyramids, the deserts, the stars,

the masterpieces of immortal art,

the lovers who said forever

in a farewell of broken vows

on the other side of the hourglass

into the chambers of your heart.

When time says good-bye

to those who arrive

and hello to those who depart.

PATRICK WHITE