THE LONELIEST, MOST PROTEAN MODES OF
MADNESS
The loneliest, most protean modes of
madness
rage in my cells like nightmares in
isolation
watching the fireflies dance through
the bars
as a secret gesture from unknown,
sympathetic stars
in a collusion of constellations to
keep up with the times
and shuck off their old myths of origin
like the straight jackets of a fixed
place,
debate whether the light-bending
darkness is chaos or freedom
or the old heirarchies of seraphic
emanations of insight
still trickle down like oracular snakes
on burning ladders.
Now if I wanted this to mean something
I’d look for a precedent for the
shadows that dart like birds
across the tunnel vision of my line of
sight
and I’d drink from the same fountain
where the leaves
lap their water like books full of
experience
and I’d borrow light years from other
men’s eyes
to verify my seeing may be new, but
it’s sound.
I don’t have any use for knowledge
and that’s why it trusts me and let’s
its hair down
as if there were nothing of any
significance to impart
to the diamond-hearted translucency of
an engaging madman
whose enlightenment sweats the details
in a fever of crazy wisdom that plays
with his mind
like a child on the moon fascinated by
the solitude of its intensity.
But you who can hear me in your blood
without asking
will recognize me by the accent of
light in my voice
and know that I don’t walk in the
footprints of grammars
that wore down this trail like a carpet
that wouldn’t fly away
until they got as far as they could
vocally could
then turned home for good, as if that
were the end of the tail
that began and ended like alpha in the
mouth of omega.
But time sweeps eternity away like a
waterclock in a deluge,
like chalk on a blackboard, a ferocity
of jewels out of the eyes
of bitter ores that couldn’t see
anything shining in the dark
by their own light like a fish out of
the reach of the sun,
that became a lantern unto itself, a
revelation
on its own wavelength that illuminated
the depths
of a darkness deeper than light years
are far
and there’s no way to divine a sign
in the immaculate darkness
for a teacher or a star. Here where the
ladders don’t reach
and there are no reflections of a
higher clarity
all senses are intensified into one
medium of perception
that doesn’t individuate the
morphology of knowledge forms
your mind holds up like a black mirror
to a chaos
of hidden harmonies that depend
inexhaustibly upon you
to add your voice to a new species of
seeing,
like a mutant gene that’s never been
heard from before.
Even in a cage, my humanity is what’s
measureless
about all things if you enter them deep
enough to understand
you can’t drown in the mirage of your
own emptiness
or badger the stars to break their vow
of silence
without giving yourself away like a
secret
everybody’s been keeping to
themselves like tears
under their breath, in the wells of
their heart,
in the dessicated watersheds of their
art
with nowhere to fall but up into the
nights within them.
The unattainable aspirations of a
madman grasping at fireflies
like the cornerstones of a new palace
of stars
that dance like chandeliers in the rain
to the timing of their musical visions
in the night.
Among the journeymen who labour for
lasting results
I do with great discipline exactly
nothing,
masterfully done. And the picture-music
is undeniably
perishable. I burn colours in the sun
on a pyre of hawkweed
like the works of a dead chameleon
evaporating
like a rainbow body that isn’t making
promises to anyone
you’ll ever hear from it again,
though mantras
echo through the mountains like the
shrieking palettes
of wild birds revoking the ease of the
nocturnal silence
with more vivid mixes of the hues in
the eyes of crazy wisdom.
I make great leaps of disbelief into
the abyss
off the ledge of a lover’s precipice
into the emptiness
and my heels flower into wings and it
feels
as if I’m departing at last like a
hermit down a mountain
with a contemporary vision of my own
empty immensity.
PATRICK WHITE
No comments:
Post a Comment