ARE YOU SAD
for Alysia
Are you sad, mauled like a
morning web
by the shadows of things
that were said
to make the candle sorry
it couldn’t shine on
alone,
the ray of its affection
lavish with the light of a
life
that isn’t a star in a
vault of bone?
Strangers in the doorway,
love-letters without a
home
that knock like footprints
in a blizzard
to marrow the telephone
that no one ever answered
with a voice as raw as
gold,
are you sad, are you cold,
is there a dolphin and a
wound
between the spaces of the
secrets
that mend their nets on
the moon?
Oceans in the rose of
night,
and poppies in the
starfields
that burn like distant
nebulae
with all the radiant
reasons why
the heart is a better
swimmer
than a lie with exits of
its own
and when we cry it’s
always summer
and keys on a chain in the
grass
that fall like cherries
and chance.
Are you sad, is there a
silence
in the eye of the storm
that advances
like a bird that is new to
the distance
between the green boughs
and the dead,
and bells that kneel in a
watershed
to appeal the lightning’s
chandeliers,
the roots of an unknown
flower
or a sword with a severed
head?
Are you sad, alone with
the alone;
is there a coast on the
verge of tears,
and someone bleeding the
starfish
and a ghost on a borrowed
throne?
PATRICK WHITE
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