AUBADE
WITH AMBIGUITIES
Everywhere
I go
I
am buckled by sorrows
weeping
like executioners
in
hooded doorways
for
the harvest of doves
they’ve
bloodied
with
their smiles,
for
the ruined roses
that
stain the hospital gowns
of
soft-spoken guillotines.
And
when I ask
for
the address
of
a rumour of joy
that
might risk
a
cameo appearance in my heart,
I
am caught in the traffic jam
of
an outdoor movie
that
is just another rerun
of
misunderstood butterflies
draped
in spider-webs.
And
the restaurants are full
of
lunar refugees
confessing
the names of God
on
a rosary of skulls
spooled
from the mass graves
of
irreversible exterminations;
and
on the highways,
drug-soaked
children,
famous
among milk-cartons,
running
from rescue
all
the way to Calgary
with
Eldorado serial killers
in
cowboy hats.
I
do not think I was born
to
be happier
than
any other man,
nor
dance with rivers all my life
under
the chandeliers
of
waltzing willows,
I
am content
to
let the autumn stars
sugar
the apples
and
the wines of life
that
have dreamed so long
of
mystic bloodstreams
wake
up from their coma
of
midnight suns
to
flirt with the morning curtains,
but
everywhere I ask for water,
the
odour of dogs
rotting
in stairwells,
virulent
mothers
blistering
coke in baby spoons
and
lonely adolescents
picking
at the scabs
of
their showcase labels
like
empty whiskey bottles
cruising
for flowers
on
emergency fire-escapes.
And
how could I ignore
the
inconsolable clowns
in
convulsions of grief,
and
the reptilian angel-slayers
that
rise from the depths
like
snapping turtles
to
unfeather the stupefied swans
as
if they tore
the
pages out of a book,
dragging
the clouds down
into
the hot mud
of
ambiguous bottom feeders?
Everywhere
the air
grows
tumescent
on
the yeasts of grief
and
the planet groans
like
a death-cart
full
of starfish, full
of
fractured wish-bones,
full
of the severed hands
of
TV amputees.
And
I want to pay the late fees
on
the lightning that struck
the
horns of the snail
like
a war-crime, I want
to
green the emeralds again
that
were bleached in a flash
by
the physics of food, my heart
burns
to proclaim to the tribunals
that
reek of thick colognes
and
pounds of atrocious innocence,
that
humans were born
to
see and be amazed,
that
there are still plants
in
the scalded jungles
that
will come forward
like
shy cures, and golden salamanders
that
will give us back our legs and arms,
that
we’re not just a necropolis
of
flesh-eating bacteria,
that
there are truths and beauties
and
ethics of water
that
aren’t just triumphal marches
under
the arches of our vertebrae,
that
there are gods at work
like
tender waterlilies
transforming
the swamp,
turning
the shit back
into
intimate constellations
that
won’t dwarf the night
with
staggering distances
or
runt the wonder
of
our brevity
with
the unattainable radiance
of
reversible wedding gowns.
I
want to make it all better,
breeze
the pain
with
blue-eyed summers
from
a cedar hope chest,
appease
the hungry
with
mountains of bread
ored
from miraculous grains,
talk
the bridges down
from
their keystone suicides
by
showing them what’s needed
to
get to the other side;
do
everything I can
to
grant immunity
to
the bloodbank
that
cries constantly
under
my window at night
for
braver transfusions,
give
up an eye if I must
to
defray the cost
of
blind justice,
do
whatever it takes
to
prune the hazardous stars
from
the razorwire crowns
of
our unexempted suffering.
But
everywhere I go,
roadkill
redirecting traffic,
arsonists
in volunteer fire brigades
pissing
on a field that’s burning,
closet
terrorists in uniformed bomb squads,
defusing
suspect shopping-malls,
computer-generated
humans
mechanizing
the rights of man,
soldiers
safer in the army
than
children in their beds,
leaders
following the followers
in
climacterics of lemmings,
the
rich bitching the poor
are
the reason they suffer,
deviants
preaching deliverance
to
delinquents on their knees,
free
markets enslaving nations
to
brand-names on demand,
banks
robbing the wretched
to
give to those with more,
genocide
on probation
while
murder goes to jail,
excellence
cowed by fools
when
ignorance runs in schools,
doctors
despising health
as
an obstacle to wealth:
anyway,
you get the picture.
When
the fleas
train
the tigers
to
jump through fire
and
the crows
coach
the hawks
to
look for silver,
or
the avalanche
tells
the mountain
where
to stand
for
a photo-op,
even
if you feel,
even
if the heart
bleeds
like a blackberry
punctured
by thorns,
and
you’re up
to
your neck
in
a starless tar pit
darker
than night,
and
the bombs fall
like
meteors like
the
foundation stones
of
crystal palaces,
is
there a point
a
pebble
an
afterlife under
these
quicksand pyramids,
these
deserts in an hourglass,
this
crack in the dawn
to
build another world upon?
PATRICK
WHITE
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