NEVER ALONE WITH A CANDLE

NEVER ALONE WITH A CANDLE

Never alone with a candle

a firefly in a valley,

a star above the hill,

is your seeing less beautiful

than that stranger in the mirror

who takes you by surprise?

Can you hear your eyes

your eyes your eyes your eyes

falling like rain

on the plectra of the flowers?

Is that a coffin or a harpsichord?

Scarlatti playing the columbine

or the midnight requiem

of a dolorous pine longing

for a nightbird that never comes?

I can sense you count yourself

a dandelion among delphiniums,

a brown star without solar flare,

a moon with a complexion of coral,

and even from here I can hear

that happy bell you wear

like your heart on your sleeve

to let people know you’re coming,

and either fake it or leave.

Fashionable mirages of make-believe.

Black roses of mascara

with comets for eyebrows,

their noses stuck up in the air

like the wrong end of a telescope.

Born this crude ore of a man

what can I know of a woman’s feelings

moving around inside of me at night

like underground rivers of gold?

But, sweetness, if I were to guess,

there are stones much more lustrous,

more polished, more shapely

than even the linghams and yonis,

unenlightened cosmic eggs

with nothing inside to reveal,

no stars, no jewels, no chandeliers

of sad insights into dark mirrors

of what’s inconceivably real

and what’s merely the fossil

of an extinct species of fish

trying to swim through brimstone.

Does the sea envy its waves

because its ambient eyelashes

aren’t long enough to paint

a black velvet masterpiece

signed by a cosmetic line

of flash in the pan movie stars?

Isn’t it enough the moonlight

adorns your eyelids like a lake?

I haven’t touched a woman’s breasts yet

when I didn’t feel like a sailor

lost at sea without a lifeboat

in an ocean of heaving roses.

And I’ve slept with enough women

to know beauty isn’t only skin deep.

Sometimes it’s a shipwreck on the bottom.

Sometimes it’s a blood diamond

on the black market of a cheap eclipse

that bleeds out like haemorrhaging slaves.

Sometimes it raves like Medusa

at the snakepit of a hairdo in the mirror

that turns her reluctant heroes into stone.

You weep for this? You curse your body

your lips, your nose, your legs, your thighs,

the white-out of your smile, your eyes,

your hands for not being doves,

your hair because it doesn’t flow

like long blonde tresses of honey

from a hive of killer bees,

because you don’t think

you can please Adam well enough

with the apple you hold out to tempt him?

Ask Majnun about Laila,

it’s not the goblet, it’s the wine inside,

and from what I know of night and desire,

I’ve never met a man

who wouldn’t drink from his own skull

just to taste it like a mirage in an hourglass

or a message in a bottle on the moon.

Don’t judge the potency of the elixir

by the popularity of the flower

it’s taken from like a love potion

nor the strength of the poison

by the dowdiness of the snake.

And I don’t say this waxing insincerely

like the false dawn of a consolation

for something you’re austerely missing.

You’re not a nun among flowers

about to take vows

of silence and celibacy

because you don’t know how

to attract bees to your cult of one.

You’re not a black mass

with a rose petal on your tongue

instead of the thorn of the moon.

Why do you desecrate

the vases and urns of the wildflowers

that bloom like New England asters

in the starfields of your windowless room

like the prophetic heads of the dead

because they’re not sunflowers

or waterlilies and wild irises

in full bloom along the banks

of your cresting mindstream?

Why do you pass the hours

snuffing fireflies out in your tears

like a constellation of match heads

on the sill of a broken windowpane

in a misbegotten house

of a wayward zodiac for rogue stars?

You’re not a calendar of scars

marking time with razorblades

on the bone of your wrist

like some Neanderthal

who’s just discovered time

because there’s no view of you

scenic enough to cut out and save

that isn’t nicked by crescent moons.

Have you not seen the envy

in the eyes of those first magnitude

fixed stars showcased

on a starmap, jewels under glass,

butterflies pierced through the thorax

for the garishness of their wings?

Take a look for yourself.

Do you not see

how deeply they envy

the beauty and freedom of fireflies

who’ve gotten off the grid?

It’s not just the light that’s beautiful,

it’s what it shines upon as well.

That’s how the flowers talk to the stars

in the same universal language.

Not as lesser avatars of shining

but as one beauty to another

in an alphabet of loveletters

they leave unsigned, unaddressed,

for anyone who wants

to walk in the moonlight awhile

neither in nor out of style,

as beautiful in their own skin

as the auroral silks of the northern lights

or the moon a vaudeville stripper peeping

through the boas of the clouds

when that’s all she’s wearing

like a changeable wind, a radiant sky

revealing and veiling simultaneously

the bright vacancy of one side

and the dark abundance of the other

more intriguing face

she’s turned away from.

The one you can easily see

on the other side of your own eyes

when you turn the light around

and let the mirrors labour to perfect

the artless beauty of their reflections

by imitating you like a ballet

in the feathered death mask of a swan

learning to move with the beauty and grace

of someone flowing

like a river on the moon,

a white Taj Mahal reflecting

the pale towers of a torch

that burns like stars and lilies

in the black waters of its dark opposite.

Ask any Luna moth at the window.

it’s not the shape, colour, scent

of the votive candles or fragrant lamps

you’ve devoted to your solitude

that draws them in out of the night.

It’s the intensity of the light

that summons them to you like seance.

Ghosts, poets, lovers, artists all alike.

The way things are here, not

as they seem to appear and disappear

like fireflies in a mirror

but as they are and will ever be

the translucency of stars by night

the clarity of flowers by day,

the sun shining at midnight,

the moon keeping its shadows a secret

from the occult powers of noon,

all the beautiful shapeshifters,

all the moody chameleons,

each with a face of their own

as unique and revealing as the universe.

In every drop of water

the depth of the sky

as in every tear an eye

that can see straight through you

to the beauty within

when you’re as easy on yourself

as a starfish on the moon

a dolphin with stage fright

on the catwalk of the stars

changing wardrobes like weather,

night seas of habitable planets

wholly at home in the mindscapes

of their luminous atmospheres,

their immaculate waterskins,

as they are in the rags of those mirages

you keep drowning your radiance in.

A constellation in the desert

that’s underwhelming itself

by forgetting that fire knows

how to swim in the deep end

of shadows on the moon

like the flame of a candle or a goldfish

even you for all your tears,

your weeping willow chandeliers,

your wishing wells, your watersheds,

your shaded windows, your broken mirrors,

the torn nets of those dreamcatchers

you gouged the eyes out of

like semi-precious jewels

that didn’t measure up to diamonds.

Even you, for all you relinquish

of your native beauty to comparisons

with the costume jewellery of other eyes

than your own, try as you might

to unfeather the plumage of the moon

you could never extinguish,

you could never eclipse or blow out,

no more than you can hold a mirror

up to the dead like a portrait of smoke

and convince them beyond

the shadow of an unreasonable doubt

it’s a simulacrum of your solitude,

though it looks nothing like you

sitting alone by a candle in the nude.

PATRICK WHITE