Saturday, February 25, 2012

THE PURE JOY OF WATCHING THINGS


THE PURE JOY OF WATCHING THINGS

The pure joy of watching things
come together beyond me
of their own accord
without ever having been achieved
as if a leaf were suddenly amazed by apples
it didn’t know anything about.
Watching the mind
walk on its own waters like moonlight
as if it had never heard of my name
and being astonished and delighted
by everything that goes on without me
like habitable planets
revolving around the fireflies
that show up now and again
like tiny green suns that keep them guessing
at the nature of the relationship.
Knowing time and space might be a guitar
but life plays a corny accordion that breathes
music in and out of its lungs like good air
and what you feel is
what you hear when you listen
as if no one were there.
Reasons to write
if you need them like training wheels
or crossing guards to hold your hand
and back the traffic up
all the way to the other side of nowhere.
Reasons to disappear into an expression
that gives shelter to your voice
in someone else’s mouth.
You’re crying.
But they’re not your tears.
You’re listening.
But not with your own ears.
In these realms of dark matter
you can make stars with your eyes
if you stare hard enough into space to warp it.
Things that were shrouded in fog like a lifeboat
become opulently clear as the moon in an autumn sky.
When there’s no one to answer to
you don’t need to know why
you see the things you do.
You can look at a mountain
and see the way
the mountain sees you.
Not for the betterment of anything.
Apple trees aren’t social workers.
They’re just turning their roots inside out
to be what they happen to be.
They know a lot more
about changing things for the good
by raising stars up out of the dirt
as a way of living without virtue
that makes them generous and beautiful
without enslaving the world in gratitude
without even trying
than those who grunt for evolution
like the spent radicals of a lost revolution.
Do nothing
and nothing is left undone.
Say nothing
and everything is perfectly expressed.
Be nothing
in your homelessness
and everything’s your guest.

PATRICK WHITE

GRAY RAIN


GRAY RAIN

Gray rain
but the trees
are teaching the stars how to break into leaves.
Good rain on the good earth.
Autumn’s a long passage.
Spring is full of thresholds.
Rainbow bridges in the distance
over urgent streams.
Everything’s in a rush to become something.
I thought I knew once
who I was supposed to be
but more and more it eludes me
like a future that’s already behind me.
I leave it to the world
to finish what I began
and include myself in the mystery
and try to carry on like a man
who looks at a star he won’t follow
through the branches of the burgeoning trees
as the history of who I am
now that I’m not anymore.
The less I am the more there is to be.
And one eye doesn’t get in the way of the other as much.
There is just this as it is
and what am I beholding
if I’m not looking upon myself as I am
in common with everything
that’s changing all around me
like a mind that can’t contain itself
in any fixed mode of being
anymore than the eye
can decide what it’s seeing.
Everything is burning with life in the rain
and change is the dangerous bliss
we feel when we cease to exist.
The trees might have fingerprints
graven into their bark
and you might accord them
an identity in the dark
and approve of their names
and let them pass as if you knew who they were
but that doesn’t make them
any less of a stranger than you are
or the clouds carry passports.
Praise be to the abundance of oblivion
and the cornucopias of blackholes
in the hearts of the galaxies
that keep wounding themselves into life
by falling on their own swords
like a knife that heals.
By day the light gives.
But at night
it steals.
And the mirror lives
and pours water over the eyes of the blind
and suddenly the stars can see again.
And the grape hyacinth is drunk on blue wine.
And I’m walking on water on the moon
even as the moon walks on my tears
without knowing which ones
flowed from the bells of my sorrows
and which overwhelmed me
like birds in the fountains of joy.
First I am a man.
And then I am a boy.
Spring takes itself for granted.
And autumn comes on with regrets.
But they both know
this is as good as it gets
and nothing’s missing
in the mind’s lost and found.
It’s just the way things get around
when you throw the world back in the water
like a life of your own
you gave up years ago
to be who you are now.
Praise be to the stars
that stop by the gate this late
to chat about gardens
and how to keep
the roots of the roses alive
when the ground hardens.
Even if you’re a demon in steep descent
or an angel rising from hell
life has the power of a flower
and the genius of a universe
to turn falling into a calling
like planets and Canada geese.
You can walk out alone
into a wide open field at night like I do
and stand there under the stars
that have been staring at you since childhood
like someone they should keep an eye on
and say: This is me. This is who I am as I am
to the whole twinkling lot of them in self-defence
to uphold the savage dignity of the difference.
You can stand there in the vastness
of that one definitive thought
that goes on forever like a silence older than birds
and feel the sweet release of upending joy
trying to master its new freedom
when space morphs into a mouth for a moment
and says softly
o so softly
in a voice that’s been singed by compassion:
No.
You’re not.

PATRICK WHITE