YELLOW WILDFLOWERS UNDER A GREY SKY

YELLOW WILDFLOWERS UNDER A GREY SKY

Yellow wildflowers under a grey sky,

visionary smog on the dirty windows,

a genie in a crack pipe that ungrants

whatever wishes you came with

thinking six rocks might be enough

to make a whole new planet

everybody gets to rule

for an hour and a half

like fresh strawberries

and a brand new start. Fat chance.

The spring dawn has run out of preludes

and it’s using spider webs

and dreamcatchers for substitutes.

Could be a lifeboat, could be a shipwreck,

could be this cataract of ash

in my third eye, could be the distant cinder

of a depressed seagull on my bent event horizon.

High calibre thoughts

as dizzy as bullets and marbles

in a game of Russian roulette

that’s in it for the vertigo

and suggestive stage effects.

Addicted to the mystery

I’m always more intrigued

by what I don’t know

about what I mean

than I am by what I do.

It’s good to see wisdom

still holding hands with ignorance

after all these partially eclipsed,

partially enlightened spaced-out light-years

that went by in the flash of firefly

through the temple of a prophetic skull

that thought it was playing with lightning

when, in fact, it was only

third man on the match.

How could I possibly regret

what I still don’t understand about life,

or celebrate what I delude myself

into giving the benefit of the doubt

when I open my mouth like a dove cage

and all the words fly out,

every mourning dove and longing nightbird

with a message that might be true

from me to God knows who?

And I know I’ve been staring dragons

in the eye too long

waiting for the moon to blink first,

as if I had something to prove

about the indefensible dignity of a human

when one isn’t there to defend itself.

The true human isn’t truly human.

I think it was Hakuin who said that.

And besides, my humanity when I am one

talks with the tongue of a scuffed boot

that’s been down one too many roads,

stepped once too often over the edge,

or on a landmine buried in snow,

crossed too many thresholds,

too many burning bridges

with the broken heart of a bell in my mouth

and my new freedom shrieking

like a banshee at the door

to care much about what thing

comes thus anymore. Could be a curse,

could be a blessing, could be par for the course,

or worse, the sonic boom of experience

breaking down the sound barrier

of another sacred syllable for the record books.

Days I feel like a white tiger on the moon

with the fang of my first crescent

broken off, doomed to starvation

like fire stalking meteors for their oxygen

as once I used to drink blood like the nectar

of freshly-killed ruby-throated humming birds

that tasted like small aperitifs

of delirious picture-music

at the trough of the hollyhocks to me at the time.

Yesterday if you were to ask me what self is

I’d have said the sum of all you tried to rise above

but didn’t. Today it’s not even worth

considering the question longer than it takes

to dismiss the ensuing silence

as just another kind of curious theory.

O to be as useful and down to earth

as a wheelbarrow in the world,

a vehicle for building materials one way

and a death cart for the dead and unwanted

getting the excess baggage out of the way

of the garden I’ve wanted to be from the very start

sitting with Hafiz and Shabastari

like fountainmouths in the shadowwater

of the black walnut trees gibbering

with irritated sparrows and circus squirrels,

shooting the lyrical breeze just for the hell of it.

What could be sadder or lonelier than a muse

that no one’s listening to, if it isn’t a poet

who doesn’t write back in tears to cool her eyes

with a song he made up on the sly

to slip under her door like a mailbox at midnight?

The wind rustles in the crowns of the trees

like the transient themes of pollen and dust,

and at night, gusts of stars, we all are.

And there are fires that give us sanctuary from the cold

we can sit around like planets for a whole lifetime

trying to squeeze a constellation out of smoke

and chimney sparks, and never manage

anything more than a firefly shy of a flashlight

trying to read a star chart in the dark

like a nightwatchman peering through windows

looking to see if anything’s out of place,

untoward, missing, or lost in a space of its own

like a stay-at-home atmosphere trying to find a planet

that doesn’t take it for granted like ozone on the moon.

Tomorrow, where will today be

when you look back on it like yesterday

if not at the same seance you summoned it to just now

to try on the death masks of the ancestral mediums,

eyebrow to eyebrow, on both sides of their eyes,

as if you were choosing the best language

to speak to yourself in when you’re an alien among the stars

and everything is too immense, too radiantly hot and cold,

and time crowds eternity out of its imagination

and the void is so colour-blind it couldn’t find its way home

if you were to line the streets with lighthouses,

and to be a human is to be exalted and humbled

in the same moment, like a moonrise without any frills

like vapour trails in a sunset, or ghosts

before the break of dawn anxious

to get back to their graves on time, and you can tell

by the way she carries her prophetic skull with dignity,

she’s trying to do what we’re all trying to do

each after our own fashion, given we’re made of starmud.

Ingather and shine, ingather and shine, any way you have to.

PATRICK WHITE