AS MUCH AS I LOVE THE STARS

AS MUCH AS I LOVE THE STARS

As much as I love the stars, I know

the spirit must seek its lost radiance

in the midst of the filth of this world,

even when its third eye is trying

to wash it off in tears it really means.

Under the half-closed eyelid

of the pine cone pagoda in oceanic meditation

is a fire-seed waiting for immolation

like an overdue urn about to give birth.

And do you see how the moon

feathers the waves with silver,

and the breathing waters so much

like the flesh of a woman undulating

under the caress of an unaccustomed hand

shines back like fish swimming through a starmap?

As above so below. Same with inside and outside.

Astrophysics is psychology. Noumena, phenomena.

Are you looking for a unified, field theory of your mind?

Study that small sacred syllable of a black ant

with the torn wing of a butterfly

under full sail in its mandible

it’s taking back to the heap

of a thriving passage tomb burial

like a high card it’s going to lay on the table

without intending to call anyone’s bluff.

The moon on the lake isn’t timed.

Death’s not too late. Life’s not too early.

Not all the flowers bloom at once

in a wave of mass hysteria at a sports stadium.

Time is as generous to the dandelion

as it is to the hyacinth or the rose.

When a total eclipse of the soul

can be as illuminating to a firefly

as the enlightenment of the full moon

can be to the mad at harvest time

and the night bird sings on the same branch

out of the same longing

as the mourning dove does

on the burgeoning bough,

how far must a wave look for the grail

before it realizes it’s swimming in it

and by virtue of it having never been lost or found,

like the universe you’re surrounded by

dipping its other wing in the cup you drink from

like blood from your own prophetic skull

or an elixir of love from the goblet of a black tulip,

as an antidote to falling into a cult of trances,

trying to teach rattlesnakes to ghost dance for rain

when everywhere you look as far as the eye can see,

nothing but the bleached bones of their vertebrae

crumbling like aqueducts across a sea of sand

looking for the holy hourglass to green it again?

When things are like this, why send

a caravan of mirages like thought-trains

on a pilgrimage for water on the moon?

Is a course correction more innocent

than its original direction or is it

just another change of heart on the part

of a weathervane that thinks linearly

it’s got its hand on the rudder of the wind?

Best thing to do in a storm

is let go of the wheel of birth and death

and either go down with the ship like a constellation,

or trust in a bubble-shaped universe you still might float

like a turbulent waterlily above the turmoil of it all,

anchored to the bottom like a key on a kite

to lure the lightning to your spinal cord

the way copulating snakes make their own caduceus,

twin wavelengths from the same inner matrix

ascending like helical thermals under a dove’s wings,

so that dragons are born of cosmic eggs

that know how to heal fire with fire

that can consume itself like life

without ever getting burnt out

even when autumn’s coming on

and you can begin to smell

the smoke and ashes on its breath.

Enlightenment the inspiration of the search,

the spirit returns to the candle in your hand,

to dance with the flame of life within you

on your own threshold, in your own doorway as you realize

like someone waking up from a dream

in their own bed, their head on a softer pillow

than they imagined a moonrock could be

at one sixth the gravity of earth, what

was there to aspire to that could possibly be

higher and wiser than a cloud circling a mountain

or down in the valley where the stars slum

once they get off the night shift, more compassionate

than a honey bee in the eye of a stargazer lily

smothering it in a rusty ochre dust storm of pollen

the way we prepared our dead when we lived in caves

to bloom like a hive when its spirit returns to matter

in its next incarnation as a gust of wildflowers on Mars.

Hawkweed and Indian paintbrush I would think.

And the unusual fruits and flowers that can sprout

from a windfall of intensely radiant meteor showers

flung out of the darkness by the hands of generous sowers

that were ploughing the moon for themselves

long before the ox of the mind showed up

like the blessing of a delusional dependency

that makes you think, gone to seed, you need it.

When the truth has always been mindful

and mindlessly green as the thorns and the leaves

of the locust trees in spring coming into blossom

as easily as the mindstream follows its own lead everywhere

with nothing but its own flowing for a navigator.

No gate, no lock, no pivot, no hinge, no waterclock

trying to put the fire of life out in a bucket brigade

of community-oriented arsonists, departure

never any further off the beaten path from home

than its arrival can be lead astray

by the shadow of the return journey

it casts behind it like the widening wake

of a waterbird’s wings unravelling

the flying carpet of the water that wove it

like wavelengths of the hidden harmonies

that are on your side like your eyes are

when you step out of the blazing house of life

once in a while, into the expansive solitude

of your own inimitably creative darkness,

without a candle, a firefly, a lightning strike

for a guide, and look up, just look up

in any direction you wish, and don’t pick any one

of the six thousand stars you can see

with the naked eye in the country,

no matter you don’t know their names

or myths of origin, or much about shepherd moons,

or what an antikythera is, then run around

looking for an underground circumpolar sage

to show you on a starmap where your shining is at

like the light of the star, though you cry

in bliss and sorrow, delusion and insight,

you can’t wash out of your own eye

anymore than you can Venus in the dawn

when you’re sitting on a mountain under a Bodhi tree

trying to attain the unattainable empty-handed

in the same breath that’s been giving it all away

for light years, inexhaustibly, like a flower-mouth

of enlightenment in everything you say or do,

the world in the creative wake of whatever medium

that’s shapeshifting into you like water into fish,

darkness into star, sky into a bird on the wing

in a homesick sunset, or the shining of the source

like the lantern in your hand you needlessly labour

at keeping lit to go look for it without realizing

it’s your own blazing that blinds you to the gift

of what the darkness arrays before you like candles and stars

and nocturnal waterlilies opening like a new moonrise

amazed by the occult mystery of the fire that burns

in the subliminal watersheds of your fathomless eyes.

In this boundless space, why should you be surprised

behind all the masks of God, her best disguise

when the hidden secret wished to be known

and she revealed herself, was your own face,

your eyes, your mouth, your ears, your voice alone

pouring the universe like the light of picture-music

into your own ears like the spirit of a word

that can’t be enlightened until it’s been heard by you.

PATRICK WHITE