IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER THINGS FOR AWHILE

IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER THINGS FOR AWHILE

If only I could remember things for awhile

as they were before they changed. Savour them.

Let the flavour of the jewel

that’s been ripening in my voice

wash through my mouth

like the mystic blaze of a star sapphire

and every word I say be a firefly of insight

that can shed some light on dark matter.

Would that my tears fell fruitfully enough

to feed the world, that one drop of my blood

after years of preparing the potion, were enough

to immunize a whole planet from affliction.

And what marvels would my eyes not delight

in showing anyone, if they could astonish the blind

like an orbiting telescope that’s just had

its cataracts removed

like the reflection of the moon peeled

like an albino eclipse off the black mirror of the lake

only to discover that all this time they groped through the dark

like star-nosed moles, it was their own face that got in the way

of what was shining. If only my hands

knew how to build like the birds

and my bones were strong crossbeams and rafters,

what palaces of light and water and air

would my heart not offer to the homeless

like the growth rings of a maple tree

that threw them the keys like winged samara

and said, move in, its yours. It’s built on bedrock

not the quicksand cornerstone of a slum lord.

For the lonely sitting with their cats and their elbows

in half-opened windows, observing

the pigeons and the stars for memorable events,

I would break this long fast of my solitude

like black Slavic peasant bread with strangers

who sat above the salt at the table

as my honoured guests, and ask them, eye to eye,

heart to heart, all ears, as if I were a radio telescope

listening like Seti, if they’ve heard any news back yet

from Bellatrix or Rigel, and which

of Jupiter’s shepherd moons is hiding

a secret affair with life that everyone’s dying to know.

It’s heart-breaking that we can’t all bring our tears to bear

into one cloud weeping over a drought like a dry creekbed

where we’re all hibernating in our own starmud

like toads and frogs waiting for flashfloods of the next rain

to underwhelm us like gravestones in a makeshift cemetery.

What would the world be like if we could

walk up a long country road at night far from ourselves

and not have to ask the roadkill for directions in life?

As if we were sure enough where we were going

to risk being followed by the lost like a starcluster of fireflies

within the compass of everyone’s bearings, not

out there somewhere like the ghost of a spaced-out lighthouse

but like the porchlight of nearby farm on a summer night

that draws living things out of the dark like the full moon to it,

even if it just be gnats in the air, bats, or Luna moths,

what a seance of life we could be to each other

as if we left the screen door unlatched

for any lunatic of the light on the road this late at night

who might wander in like the seeds of new themes on the wind

to enrich the bright vacancy of our dark abundance

with a starmap to where our buried treasure lies hidden

like diamonds in the ore of the hearthstones of our hearts.

If I could take the whole of my darkness

and enchant its snakepits into the wavelengths

of the light I would have emanate out of me

like the rainbow body of a Tibetan rinpoche

entrusted with the wisdom of the Himalayas

to seek a low place among the stars like a sea

that all things flow down into like the shining images

we retain of ourselves like the reverberations

of experienced luminaries echoing

like seasoned birds to each other

in the valleys and black holes of tears and death below.

Sacred syllables of immortal butterflies

in the orchards of morning and moonrise.

I would shine down upon the abyss of the lovers

like a water star from the bottom up

of all the burning bridges they have yet to cross

like Aldebaran at zenith, or Cygnus at nadir,

to get them to the other side

of what binds them to each other

like water and air, light, earth and fire,

and each moment of my life, every step

I risked anew, I would become the way

that’s never taken itself before this deep into the mystery

of what it means to be alive and everywhere

be endangered by the beauty of our own awareness.

Instead of breathing for the dead as long as I can

underwater on the moon, I would invite them

to make a new birthmark in new medium

that calls them back from the night like light

from the scattered ashes of the empty urn of a star

coming together again in a gravitational womb

of their own remains, where everyone achieves

the all consuming illumination of their endless afterlives

by opening the koan of a single flower

in the light of their darkest hour of perennial insight.

PATRICK WHITE