FLOWERS ADRIFT ON THE FRAGRANCE OF THEIR OWN FOREGOING

FLOWERS ADRIFT ON THE FRAGRANCE OF THEIR OWN FOREGOING

Flowers adrift on the fragrance of their own foregoing.

In the night that takes me under its wing

to shelter me from myself, arrival and passage of spring.

Fish nibble at the wafer of the moon on the tongue of the lake.

The wind bitter as a green apple with an innocent cruel side.

Saturn at dawn,Venus at dusk, things abide in their own good time

without knowing for whose sake they shine until the mind

can’t keep a secret anymore and let’s the heart know

what the heart has always known. Reason is colour blind.

Everything that’s hidden out in the open isn’t invisibly camouflaged

to look like God at a quick glance. Flowers don’t dance

with their deathmasks on. Things may have changed

since I last walked here, but they haven’t aged. Autumn

not an older season than spring, spring not younger than yesterday.

Water’s never heard of a virgin birth that ends in a real death.

Silence of time as it appears to the spirit in a deepening sea of awareness.

Nothing disfigured. Nothing restored. Nothing scarred.

Nothing wounded in the moonlight, pleading to be healed.

Earth pungent with the expectations of urgent ghosts.

And dust in the eyes of the stars, the cries of Canada geese

with more longing in their voices than celebration

like the wailing of a train disappearing like smoke in the distance

from a sad fire in danger of going out. Exits and entrances galore

there are as many ways out of here as there is space and time to stay.

Bush wolves on a far hill agonizing over something in the night

like blues harps of blood. And in the heartwood of every leafing tree

I can hear the first violins of a symphony tuning up to the light

as if something sublime were about to begin with the first drop of rain

pinging like a tintinnabulum beside the kettledrum of thunder at the back.

To speak now would be to conceal what I really feel in words.

Lavish with life, I reveal my voice in a rush of waterbirds

startled off the lake like a mantra of sacred syllables

that nuance the ripples they leave in their wake

with a whole new way of phrasing the light with eyes

that see things musically as they fall away from their wings

like the meaning of things when meaning isn’t necessary.

PATRICK WHITE