HUMBLED ON EARTH, EXALTED BY A STAR

HUMBLED ON EARTH, EXALTED BY A STAR

Humbled on earth, exalted by a star,

I say nothing and wait for the echo.

It’s bad with me tonight, more than I can bear.

I’m in isolation, but I don’t know where.

And there’s a half moon apricot blossom

over the roof of a bookstore that swears

that it’s a scar. Maybe so. But there you go.

Why blame your eyes for what they see?

Venus earlier tonight, that was the key

to a thousand doors of insight

without a threshold among them

to say how far the light had travelled

just to get to me. O, yes, no doubt, beauty,

and time-shares in eternity you can’t forget

all that easily. Something sharp and cold

and romantically aloof, diffuse, smeared

like a name on a window someone signed

in their own breath, as the night cooled down

like a glorious life into a homely death.

Crazy-wisdom, but without a path.

I followed the river to a sacred syllable

of a single drop of water on the tongue of a leaf.

Though my immutable present be the aftermath

of flowers after a funeral, a skull with a laurel wreath,

just because I steal fire, doesn’t make me inflammable.

Slow and sad, among my myriad mirages

and heart-dwarfing immensities. What is this?

What is that? I keep asking myself

so I don’t have to listen to my own answers

as if someone were here to explain them to me.

Trying to saddle a bubble on the moon

and rise to the surface like a seahorse

to see if I can ride off like Venus

into a sunset somewhere with atmosphere.

Is this a labyrinth? Is this a cul de sac?

I embody a silence deeper than death.

Forgive me, mother. Forgive me Apple laptop.

I didn’t ask for this afterlife. It’s the sum

of what I had left after I ransomed myself

from those who would have deprived me

of this tragicomedy with pastoral overtones

I’m living now like a whole new golden age

still in the ore, but reputed to be there,

though I don’t hope for too much anymore.

And it’s o.k o.k. o.k. o.k.

I’ve got a place to sleep, a painting on the go,

a poem toying with me, two cans of tuna, one

of sardines, half a loaf of bread, and a clean window

to look through when I want to disappear

into the aura of sidereal distances

that backstops the rooftops of Perth

with an atmosphere that just isn’t another

bubble of glass, and offer myself to the moon

as a qualified substitute for what it’s lost.

Probably good to serve some function in life

you know about, even if you’ve got to

make one up for yourself while you’re waiting

for the inevitable to come back for your shadow,

just to say thanks to everything, good or bad,

for why you’re watching Venus in the sunset,

as if you once had a personal relationship with it

like the third eye of a telescope that thought

it must notice you, if you stare long enough

into the nothing, face to face, with a deep love

of the universe that has abided me

so much longer than I would have.

PATRICK WHITE