FLY ON THE WINDOW

FLY ON THE WINDOW

Fly on the window, trying to get out

for hours, incessant erratic movement,

as if it were looking for a parking spot.

Strokes its legs as if it were sharpening carving knives.

Firesticks. Witching wands. Who knows?

Nothing ignites. Cul de sac. Dead end.

Aerial view of Captain Cook exploring Bella Coola,

a kamikaze at Midway looking down

into a totally translucent sea

that proves there’s an outside on the bottom

all the way to the bank across the street.

Will undaunted, the ferocity of life,

and its commitment to it,

its savage insistence on

walking itself to death on a windowpane

as immaculate as the grimy glass

even in something the size

of a mythically inflated punctuation mark.

Musca. Fly. Liar. Spawn of Beelzebub.

Are you lying to me now? What about?

What do flies lie to people about?

Bet you don’t know I’m even here.

Objectivity. The delusion

of not clinging to anything that isn’t there

as if the mind doesn’t enable a random selection

of what is. You lie to me, fly,

and, I swear, I’m going to interpret you,

existentially. No exit. No entrance.

Right now, you look like a shoe

that’s learned to walk independently.

A black slipper, a sticky computer cursor

when the batteries are dying.

Shakespeare said by indirections

we find directions out. Is that

what you’re trying to do? Personally

I think you just confuse the whole issue.

In some labyrinths you’re the only bread crumb

you’ve got to follow. And o yes now

the little squalls of frustration,

the short, angry, flights as if you want

to head-butt the glass. Break through

to the other side. The abyss of your longing.

You can see it so clearly, not even

through a glass darkly, the stars and the moon.

Is this the mirage of a heatwave in an hourglass,

or the old Satan, the shaitan, who used to be

the angel who just might still be

the angel in your way? Prophetic reason,

trying to keep you from hurting yourself,

or the pique of an idle distemper amused

by its torment of you? Until you drop

of exhaustion like a fridge magnet

that didn’t get to spell out anything.

Flat on the delta wings of your back,

legs up in the air like tiny black wicks

in a candelabra at a black mass,

or charred stakes in a forest fire of heretics.

The whole world on fire. A cosmic auto de fe.

Poetic hyperbole. But, fly. I don’t mock you.

Of all the things I could be looking at,

the trophy lines of the spidery window jewellery,

Arcturus, the one bright note like a firefly

among the staves of the powerlines,

or something lyrically fascinating

like a woman at the back of my mind,

I’m looking at you as if we both shared

the same lifeboat, you, the rudder, me,

the sail, and the name on the bow in Braille.

PATRICK WHITE