I BRING YOU NOTHING LIKE A FEATHERLESS BIRD

I BRING YOU NOTHING LIKE A FEATHERLESS BIRD

I bring you nothing like a featherless bird

that’s fallen from a nest, a sailor that knows

how he’s failed the wind all by himself

like a black sail off the coast of his hopeless gates.

But the doves in an avalanche of regrets

couldn’t reach that far into an advanced salvation

well past the last unmanned constellation of the cross.

I do not bring you my martyrdom like a relic of coal

from a primeval eclipse of occult flowers

for you to weep over like diamonds on a sunny day.

I do not ask you to kiss the curse of my birthmark

nor average out what’s crucial about the way

I approach life like a dragon in its sleep

as if I wanted to whisper something new in its ear.

I don’t need a sunspot to play dice with the sun.

Nor the rafter of a bird in flight to hold my tent up.

I’m not looking for someone to lie down nude

like a threshold to my solitude in candle light

so I can define the perimeters of my mindscape

with the boundary stones of sacred meteors

that found whole new religions just to find out

how far from home they’ve fallen from their cornerstones.

My skull and crossbones can’t be wracked up

on an abacus of one-eyed grocery clerks called to account

for the way they nibble like a lottery

on the tender green shoots of hope rooted

in an astronomical chance against making a quick recovery.

Look at me, little sister, look at the scars, look

at the skeletons I’ve welded back together

like bicycle frames in a back room repair shop.

Look at the lost chains of the orbits that wouldn’t gear down

to roll their planets over the hill, and the hot spears

of the stars that extinguished the radiance of their rage

on my flesh like killer bees. There’s no starmap

I’ve tattooed on my heart that’s going to guide you

to Treasure Island. I’m the sky burial of a crystal skull

born without a ghost to keep up my grave

out of affection for all the good times we’ve had.

The mines of my eyes are empty of jewels.

But if I were to encounter you shining

like the high priestess of the silver star

it would be as a sword I return in tribute

to the water sylphs that enchant the holy pools

that have washed my face off more than once

like the wounded reflection of a lunar deathmask

not a plough that ruts the moon for seeding.

I bleed like stained glass when I lose my faith in nothing.

And you can smell sacrilege on my breath

when the wolves are wiser than the sheep they shepherd

and the wind isn’t quoting chapter and verse

to the birds that circle the mountain like fossils of stars.

I snarl and snap at the hands of the children

they send to tame me, gnaw through the throats

of snake-necked swans that glide too close to shore

like a small town flotilla in a lilac parade for heritage tourists.

I’m a reptile with my third eye open

to the cold bloodedness of life witching in the grass

with the impersonality of an agitated shard of glass

and a bird’s eye view of what won’t get off the ground.

I’m an igneous anvil of planets. My pulse, the windfall

of a heavy bombardment of toxic oxygen

adding another hallucinogen to the atmosphere.

I live in swamps and low places like a rat snake

in a nunnery of waterlilies with perfect penmanship

though I seldom write letters home to the ones I love.

I invite the silence to remain dangerous and alone.

It’s not a career where the talking’s all done for you.

It’s a calling, and you have to listen hard

for what you cannot hear. What you cannot

see with the eyes. Calibrate with the mind.

Imprint on the heart when it’s at its most vulnerable.

Opiated affections and their buzzed out imitations

as passionate as thermostats at room temperature

might be okay for goldfish in a shark bowl

but I want you fed to me viviparously alive.

PATRICK WHITE