I TRY NOT TO CARE THAT IT HURTS

I TRY NOT TO CARE THAT IT HURTS

I try not to care that it hurts

that everytime I find a branch to perch on

and think about putting down roots

I send myself into exile

as if I were condemned

to keep abandoning my mother

like my father did

though I suspect

that’s too profoundly obvious and neat.

It’s not a true eureka moment

if it doesn’t liberate.

It’s not a true insight

if it doesn’t shed light photonically.

If it doesn’t burn holes in your starmap

it’s only another mirror.

Stars through the dirty windowpanes

on a sweltering night.

And down below on the street

drunk cowgirls on coke screaming

and pulling each other’s hair out

after the bars close

rather than go home

to lead lives of quiet desperation

the way they do the rest of the week.

I lie to myself about how things are looking up

as if I were adding another litre of oil

to a dying engine.

I still love the stars

but I feel like the third eye

of a blind telescope on crutches

tapping his way along the Road of Ghosts

with a white cane.

Somewhere along one of my lifelines

I must have seen

my chromosomes copulating like snakes

to live in the prophetic darkness I do now

like some eyeless Tiresias

being lead around

by this tiny homunculus of a child

that never ages inside of me.

I am the bastard alloy

dethroned from the royal quatternio

of the alchemical union

of the king and queen

who failed to turn base metal into gold

in the coniunction of man and woman

signifying holy matrimony

and the residue at the bottom

of the Vas Hermeticum is me.

I taste like the hot tears

of a demon in its solitude

knowing it doesn’t do much good

when you’re up to your eyeballs in hell to cry.

I’ve met a lot of messiahs

out here in this wilderness

I was driven into

like a scapegoat for the Jewish tribes

hoping I would show up and tempt them like Sarah Palin

but they’re all snakeoil salesmen in disguise

with cash registers for eyes

so I don’t even try.

I leave it to the politicians

and the corporations

to do the dirty work.

They’re better at leaving children to die than I am.

Christ’s blood streams across the firmament

like a wounded banner

in a crusade of immaculate logos

spinning their greed into a holy war

against the lamps and candles

of individual human lucidity

that engulfs the planet like big oil.

The dragon is slain.

An eclipse swallows the moon.

But it never rains.

When God was declared dead

the prince of darkness took to his bed too

and all his court jesters

who made fools of themselves

just for a laugh

were replaced by evil buffoons

who mistook themselves so seriously

for the real thing

the maggots forgot

they were the descendents of houseflies

and ran for office

like butterflies on the wing.

But Beelzebub knows better.

He rules their genes down to the letter.

And then there are creatures like me

who revel in the subtleties of seduction

like Ovid in Tomis at the edge of the Black Sea

trying on one metamorphoses after another

like alternative identities

to escape the Promethean agony of what he had to be

to steal fire like an industrial secret

from the libidinous gods and hypocrites

so everyone could hold the cold mirror

of a stolen passion

up to their lips

and kiss her like a frying pan.

The last mad sad sacrificial gift of a poet in exile.

You can judge the depths

of his silence

by the quality of his sorrows.

You can hear what could not be said

by putting your ear up

to the keyhole of what he did

and watching the shadows of picture-music

he keeps casting under your door

like a personal loveletter

he knows is bound to fail

because you keep throwing it away

like just another tree

wasted on spiritual junkmail

recognize that it’s your voice not his

that keeps the secret to itself

like an illicit affair you’re having with life.

I don’t know how much love

there is in it

but there comes a time

when a smile turns into a knife

and you run your tongue along it

in your immaculate lunar solitude

like a cultivated taste for blood.

And you put love aside

until a day later

like the last fire-hydrant in hell

that might have a chance

at ringing your bell

but the day never comes

like a phoenix in full plumage

to the ashes of your urn

and you burn your poetry

as if you were prosecuting heresy

for believing there’s always been more to you

than you were willing to let on.

The rain beats on a shallow drum.

And the cowgirls have gone home

all bloodied and muddied

to their hobby farms

and I’m sitting up here

the only homely light on the block

watching my goldfish swim

around his aquarium

like a thought

I just can’t get out of my mind.

Is life just a scar

at the growing edge of the universe

trying to remember which came first

the eye or the star

the herb or the wound

the offence or its redressal?

Is it mad

to stray from the air corridor

of the flightplan of the word

like Icarus who flew too close to the sun

carried away by the elation of his freedom

and try to earn your own wings

all the way down?

Icarus falls like this dark rain tonight

all over the inconceivable earth.

Those are his tears

running like mirrors down the window

with the broken shutter.

And those are mine

snaking through the gutter.

PATRICK WHITE