WHEN YOU LISTEN TO A BIRD

WHEN YOU LISTEN TO A BIRD

When you listen to a bird

you should hear the whole of the sky

just as when you look at a star

you should be a fountain of eyes.

Because you cannot see,

the darkness is not blind

and your consensus of conventional abnormalities

is not reality, is not the source

of the hidden halo of comets that afflict you,

nor the crazy constellations of the fireflies that bless.

I don’t know if I speak for anyone other than myself

but that’s enough to reflect the moon in every drop

of this unvoiced delirium

that surpasses enlightenment and lunacy like old shoes

to walk barefoot across the stars

as if they were no more than cool sand in a desert at night

that’s never been bound to a road,

though every single grain is the cornerstone of the world.

How unsayably me I must be

that so many thoughts and emotions,

so many vital themes of blood and time,

years that have returned their fields to the wild,

have enshrined my namelessness

in this abandoned palace of shadows

I’ve pitched together like a chrysalis out of words.

A true muse is a well

that finds its own way to your mouth,

and I accord mine the perfect freedom to be me,

and drink deeply of the night she pours into me,

until neither of us knows who the other is

though we whisper like leaves on the same tree.

What’s crucial is not to offer yourself up

like a tourist map to the wind

but to let go. To find out where you’re going

not by giving up everything that you know,

but the knowing.

I let my thoughts follow the path

of a snowflake in a blizzard

until they melt like eyes on earth

to show my roots how to flower,

this one a waterlily opening

like a diploma in a swamp,

and that, the devil’s paintbrush.

Should it be otherwise?

Can you turn your eyes back like a clock

and unsee the things

that have looked so deeply into you

the skull of an impersonal space

wears the atmospheric intimacy of your face

like the ghost of an unknown planet?

I have felt poppies of blood

hotter than any prophetic furnace

rend my flesh like starving lions

for things I never knew I believed,

for the heart I laid down like a sword on the altar

to the inexplicable gods of the misconceived,

when I realized that not even my homelessness is shelter

and the only country under the flag of my blood

that might have claimed me as its own

has caged me like an undocumentable alien

in a holding cell of bone.

But it’s foolish to look for passage

when nothing’s in your way,

or seek enlightenment with a candle at midday,

not knowing you’re only washing a mirror with shadows

and handing out wicks to the stars.

And what’s the sound of one hand clapping?

Be compassionate. Be generous. Be kind.

This is the only way to forgive your mind.

PATRICK WHITE