YOUR EYES FOR AWHILE

YOUR EYES FOR AWHILE

Your eyes for awhile

were the only eyes

I could see through

to catch a glimpse of God;

were windows into my own soul

that I could look through from the outside

without throwing the moon

through my reflection like a stone

in the hand of an angry boy.

And it was always as true

as the way your heart grew

that you could love strangers

easier than I do even now

after all these years of learning how

to talk to mirrors in their own language.

And you were not one woman

but all women forever

when I saw you once

bending down like the dusk

to touch the last of the flowers

as if you would never see them again.

As serene as the evening

there was no labour in your beauty

and I swear when I saw you that night

I felt as if I were the whole world watching

time put a finger to its lips

and pour its fountain

into the flow of your body

as if it were the sum of all passage.

And though I was your friend in all things

every evening since

the candle went out

in the lantern of a lost tomorrow

I have walked out into abandoned fields alone

and asked the saddest questions

of the most distant stars

knowing there is not enough light sometimes

even in the eyes of God

to be a companion of our sorrows.

And the questions grow longer

as the darkness deepens

the echo of my longing

in a well as dry as my skull

and closes its gates like scars.

And then those nights come

like a life or a day

or even just this moment

when I stop asking

why human suffering

is always indescribably true,

and joyful as an irreproachable buffoon

sword-dancing alone with the moon

who writes me dangerous loveletters

as if she were the Lady of the Lake

receiving me back

like a funeral ship

into this mysterium of you,

I can almost believe that you know

even though the night mocks the crow

that pines for mercy

and turns its lightless face toward you

as if it could still feel

the warmth of the sun at midnight

in your eyes again

like the afterlife of light

playing with fireflies in the abyss

now that the summer constellations have gone down;

that somehow you must know

like a guitar

on the far side of a room

where someone is singing

as if they had their ear

to the womb

of your irrevocable absence

that binds me to you with every breath

I take for two

as if I had learned to live on death

to keep you alive in me

where you still flow through the seasons

on the nightstreams of my blood

like blossoms and leaves and stars

and the moon leaves no scars on the water;

Must know. Or a demon’s a kinder face

to bestow on the darkness

than a black hole without eyes,

though it’s taken many, long, painful years

for the night to share the light with its jewels again

and as many schools as there are fools to fill them

that even just one

of those slightly compassionate smiles

you would send across the room

to cool the furnace of my heart

with the lightness of one snowflake,

one feather

gracing a change in the weather,

knew more about love

as a raindrop knows the sea

than all of us

who have been washed up

on this cold, lonely shore together

thinking we may have been saved

for something more

than this tidal longing

to brave the sea again

and even if doomed to drown

as I have learned

from these shales of pain

that have carbon-dated the eras

of my missing you

like a life that didn’t

flash before my eyes

as I went down for good with everything,

to thank-you, o, yes,

with nothing but love and light in my heart

and your face in the eye of my solitude

as I stand before the sea in gratitude

to thank-you

as you well knew one day I could

for the generosity of the wound

that has run like my life

down these eyes

these windows

this page

these empty mirrors

of autumn rain

that have wept for years without you

just to see you again

for one moment more

than the time I have left

to know that I never will.

PATRICK WHITE