SUDDENLY
THE NIGHTWIND
Suddenly
the nightwind comes
and
scatters me like dust, leaves, stars, birds,
flakes
of blood and paint from a dried rose
and
I am nowhere again among the extracted windows
compiled
like used theories in the mind-dump,
cataracts,
fog, ice between their thermal panes
an
obsolete encyclopedia of seeing, image, view,
skating
rinks and skies that shattered like eggs
from
which nothing ever flew.
Believe
me when I tell you
there
is not a flame or a shadow
as
lost as I am when I fall like moonlit rain
from
this endless pilgrimage of clouds
into
the wells and watersheds, the dark godheads
and
cracked mud of ancient creekbeds
once
urgent with my flowing. And I am a fanatic
of
unknowing when the darkness
overtakes
me on the wing, an apostle
of
undelivered monologues
humming
like a powerline
in
the ears of inattentive telephones,
the
dirty needle of a compass
that
has shared one too many directions
with
the addicts of the north. In the freefall
of
this vast space that confounds my eyes
with
numberless illuminations, gravity
is
just another superstition, light
a
bride that leaves me standing at the altar,
baffled
by absence, time, and futile distances.
Even
the atoms of my body
are
the liberated doves of a scuttled ark
that
waits in vain for signs of land
when
the waters roll me like a drunken sailor
far
from any port of call
that
ever pressed me into service.
I
grieve like a passport
for
vanished borders, circumferences
subsumed
in parsimonious points
once
radiant with lighthouses,
and
all the clandestine crossings of my youth,
the
zeniths, nadirs, transits,
all
the date lines and ecliptics,
the
equinoctial colures
that
adorned my green meridians,
my
perilous explorations,
with
nautical clocks
and astrolabes that shone like jewellery.
Now
I drift, an empty lifeboat
through
unknown waters, the toy
of
any wind and current
that
wants to play me like a map
or
a spiritual castaway
that
grew old on the way to the rescue.
Even
the language that I use, the tongues
I
once mastered to implore the world to stay,
the
tines of disaffected lightning
that
taught me how to pray,
are
the fossils of white serpents, harps
and
combs of bone between the shale
of
books that sank like continents,
the
cacophonous keyboards of burnt pianos,
the
scales and frets
of
Pre-Cambrian guitars
that
never learned to lie
by
listening to themselves
like
birds in rootless trees.
And
if now I write with the unmanned rocket
of
a pen that’s left the solar system,
sending
back these junkmail messages
these
chainletters without return addresses
in
my search for intelligent life
to
thresholds that don’t exist
except
as the lost and founds
of
imaginary households,
it’s
only my way of whistling in the dark,
of
trying to make contact with myself,
of
riding to shore like a boy on a dolphin
or
the crest of a homing wavelength
from
the ghost of a failing beacon.
And
though the solitude is overwhelming,
the
oceanic closure of the dark
a
rock on the tomb of embryonic ages
that
will rise to their feet again
and
learn to walk from heart to heart,
star
to star
in a revery of origins
that
seeds the journey back,
certain
of their courage in the open,
do
not mistake the obvious fools
for
the hidden harmony
that
guides them with an empty hand; there is
no
plea or warning in my voice,
no
call for help or a place to stand
that
isn’t already the ruined capital of the going,
and
it’s been that way for years.
PATRICK
WHITE
