I CAN’T SAY

I can’t say that my breath

isn’t the lengthening shadow

of a tree burning its leaves

like a candelabra in the sunset,

or the moon hasn’t broken its tooth

trying to open the lotus of marrow

I motherlode in the lockets of my bones

like silver and bread

for the long, lean journey ahead.

Sometimes when I look at the stars and wonder

I feel like a cigarette-butt

in a glass of mystic wine,

my little humanity, a grain of dust

on a sidereal windowsill, if that,

and I remember the ignorant sincerity

of the orchards that sweetened their apples

like a windfall of hearts

under my eyelids as I dreamed

night after night

of unknown thresholds

I might cross like a smile or a shadow

down this blood-road of blossoms and storms

that I have carried everywhere with me

like a snake in a bag.

There was a silence at the end of my fingertips

when I reached out to touch a cheek or flower,

so beautiful, so intense

I am certain I felt the pulse of God

throbbing like a bird in her vastness,

that I could almost forgive time

the bridge of cornerstones

that trampled me like a grape

in a stampede of asteroids

and buried me like water on the moon

in an avalanche of skulls.

My tears fall from the eaves of my sorrows

indifferently as rain

trying to wake seeds

like the eye of a needle

to patch the wounded earth with roots.

And I am still demonic enough

to prefer the clarity of the flame

to the pillars of smoke that pass for wisdom,

though I know it means

sailing off the edge of the world

like a galaxy on its own event horizon

with the empty hand of the wind

on a rudder it mistakes for a wing.

I don’t think I’ll go very far when I die.

I’ll pour my snake out like wine, like a candle

like music from the flutes of my bones

and charm my way

like the fragrance of a stone rose

through the dark, nameless gate

I’ve been walking through since I was born.

PATRICK WHITE