SCOURING THE PATINA OF TIME OFF WITH STARS

SCOURING THE PATINA OF TIME OFF WITH STARS

Scouring the patina of time off with stars

the way I used to grind pyrex plates

with varying grades of carborundum

down into telescopic mirrors, then silver them

with a vapour of aluminum to add

to the luster of their parabolic eyes.

Been looking into the darkness so long

I’m beginning to shine on my own.

Now from moment to moment

there’s as much darkness coming out of the light

as there are black holes sand-blasting

the hour-glass shape of this bubble of the multiverse

with firestorms of desert stars as I make my way

from one oasis to the next where the mirages

wander in out of the night to drink

from the reflections of their own faces

with hands cupped like the hulls of leaking lifeboats.

I don’t believe a life of delusion is any less painful

than a life of enlightenment, even if

your scarecrow self is finally standing naked

under a full moon that’s come to realize

that an orbit isn’t the same as an enlightenment path

that can loop back on itself like a snake or a shoelace

or the retrograde motion of Mars, without

wandering off the road you were meant to walk

because that’s the way you went. Give them both

sixteen ounce gloves and let reality

have it out with delusion in eternity

like two siblings of the same dark mother

trying to get some rest from the racket

after giving up on interceding

by putting some distance between them

light years out of earshot of the nightbirds

that have been longing for her return ever since.

Even the first bliss of the blossoming of illumination

grows sad if it’s not wholly shared like an orchard

with everyone as the wind turns around like a fist

flowering into a more open-handed approach to life.

Enlightenment is in everyone like a wavelength

is in a particle when no one is watching.

And if today you’re an angel in a coma of ice

tomorrow the diamonds will fall out of your dark halo

and slowly thaw you out as you get closer to the light

like a comet plunging into the sun like the vapour

of a bridal veil you’ve finally shed like a snakeskin

that had to come off like the white-out of the eclipse

you were living, to see the stars that were rooted

in the darkness within emerging out of your own starmud

like waterlilies and larkspur and the peony buds

of the remote observatories on cold mountaintops

breaking into life like planets at a suggestion from the ants.

Stations of our perishing, perhaps. Phases of the moon

topping my skull up again like the cup that she drinks from

with the crazy wisdom of the lunatic she takes for a companion.

First crescent after the crone. Death’s door left ajar

to let a little of the light out for those of us

who like to walk down long country roads alone at night

brindled by shadows, runged by black flames

like ladders of prophetic fire with nothing left to lean on

but the event horizons of their own imaginations

exploring the inevitable exits and entrances

of the passage of life like a waterclock of stars

descending the dark stairwells of the night with the maple keys

to the secret cellars where they age the best wine

by letting it stare into the dark so long

it begins to shine like a blind dream with a light of its own.

PATRICK WHITE