WITH FINGERS OF SAND
With fingers of sand, with
hands of water
with hearts fuller than
apples with night,
we reach out to pluck
the orchid on the moon,
to touch beauty on the
wing,
the coal swan with
feathers of flame,
the shadows that wear
our face,
the skin of a waterleaf of
gold
that evaporates like an
eyelid of dust,
the pilgrim on the
smoke-road of the candle,
the black panther in an
oildrum,
and the vision is
blanched from the seeing
like the albumen of an
egg,
the albino leper cooked in
the mouth of the moon,
we reach out for what
exceeds us,
for the dark thresholds
of blood
in the palace of the rose,
the vivid windows of the
sea
with their curtains of
light and salt,
the green chandeliers of
the rain,
the hidden excellence of
the early wood sorrel
that whispers to us from
its solitude,
shy secrets, indigo birds
of paradise
with harps of eloquent
feathers,
the laments and deadly
night shades
of the alone with the
alone in a shadowless abyss.
And there’s the
predicate of an unexpected jewel
sewn into the lining of
everything;
even the flies are touched
by rainbows
and the morning lifts her
gown
and wades gloriously
through the oilslicks,
hummingbirds in the sour
trumpets of the weeds,
jungle parrots painting
passion fruit
with palettes of stuttering neon,
hard oyster hearts that
bed with pearls. Everyone
reveres the beauty of the
wine on the lips
of the unsayable quality
of being
that supersedes them, a
facet of the turning jewel
that falls like the
eyelash of an angel,
a winged samara of
autumn dusk
into the seeing, and for a
moment as long as life
they touch the pulse of
an ageless longing
and feel beating within
them
in a panic of wonder and
joy,
the radiance of the
starbound dove
caught in the throat of
the chimney.
Even the worst have known
the nightsky reach down
and wipe the stains from
their eyes,
or felt embraced by a
warm summer rain
that polished their skin
like heritage silver
and remembered it for the
rest of their lives.
For me, the chalice in
the ore is you;
for me, you are all
lenses, all mirrors
dewed by the waterveils
of the mystery
in the early morning
dark before creation
begins itself anew. My
heart is seized by the fire-trance
of a sacred silence, the
word within the word
as if wax suddenly
discovered the flame
whose dancing made its
flesh melt in a luminous consummation.
Even seared in the
igneous cages of my heart,
an iron tiger baring its
worn fangs
to the torment of the
staring, when I think of you,
a nightbird with gates
for wings
brings me a star and a
key
and the bars turn into the
pillars of palatial winds,
and an openness lies
before me that tastes of lilacs and rain.
For years I’ve been
witching for water in hell,
for years I’ve been
diving for corpses in quicksand,
living like a squall in a
shipwreck
under the eyes of a
pleading lighthouse,
and the morning was just
the morning
and the night was just
the night,
and I thought it would
go on like this
until I stared myself to
death,
believing there was only
the suffering
and the emptiness, and
the suffering
and the black, mute bells
of the wingless seabirds.
Now there’s a planet
that gleams like an eye
in the peacock silks of
the twilight,
and a woman standing in
the last shadows of the willow
like a doorway, like a
ghost on a wharf,
like the depths of an
urgent spear.
PATRICK WHITE
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