I LISTEN TO THE SILENCE

I LISTEN TO THE SILENCE

I listen to the silence, not the ambassador birds of the message

aligned along the branch of a black tree,

waiting to have their say, deliver

the formal meaning; I follow them back

to the original fountain-mouth of the silence

that isn’t dawn or sunset, or a woman in a garden,

but a clear light with the presence of a feather

and, almost at times, a face, that’s always been there

behind the racket and the paint rags

of the cacophonous actors gathering on stage,

the understudy that hovers like a silver fish

in the reeds and the shadows of the undulant curtains,

rarely seen, and more of a fragrance of light

than a second queen, an unverifiable void

with delicate gestures that turn all my questions

back on me like the soft underside of milky green leaves,

as if something took my hand and turned it over

to show me the answers pearled in my palm.

And it would be wrong to attribute eyes to this silence

though I feel it’s the space where the seeing happens

in the beginningless moment before

the watcher and the watched rework the seeing up into a play

of heroes, villains, events, and fireflies of awareness

in a chronic struggle of opposites.

And it would be wrong to accord it a mouth, lips, a tongue

because it seems to say everything

without saying anything, without

wounding itself on the quick edge of a word. And there are times

when it almost seems to smile upon my childish efforts

to know what it is, to return to the sea,

to the corals of the moon, with my hands full of cherries and stars,

the abundance of living on the earth

with waterlilies and rat snakes.

It indulges me with the serenity of an old, unknown sorrow

that had to create the world to speak itself to the end

and now sits enthroned in the emptiness of its own presence.

And just when I think I’ve come up against its impassable clarity

like a fly against a windowpane;

I discover myself immersed in it like an eel

undulating like a free banner of water

through its unpartitioned enclosure,

hardly a wavelength of distinction between myself and it;

and everything I write is an oracle

that swims away knowing more about it than I do

before I decided not to ask it for a name.

And though it may have been the voiceless cachet

of the divine numinosities that opened

the resplendent roses of the past

that squandered their eyelids on asphalt and scripture,

the watershed of the snow-robed mountain gods,

now it’s a drop of water holding its breath like the moon

at the tip of the green sword of the cattails

ready to send a shudder of tears and blood and fruit

through the mirror again like the first pulse

of its falling into existence, hazelnuts into the mouths

of waiting salmon, things losing their balance

against the backdrop of the hidden harmony

by which they are created in the image of their own conception

and known: apple-blow from the orchard

or ashes from the nightshift crematoria.

And, perhaps, this is that silence that seizes the heart with the love

of an unsayable emptiness as infinite as the beloved

that can’t be filled by anyone less,

as a question must be returned like a wave to the sea that asked it

before it realizes on the threshold of its own depths

there never was a brevity of being

that hasn’t always been the perfect answer.

PATRICK WHITE

I TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

I TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

I turn out the lights and lie down to sleep

and you open up within me like a lotus of fire

blooming in the darkness of a vast inner space

that has become my only skin, tattooed with stars

as I play solitaire with destiny, using your Tarot

of chameleonic constellations as a firing squad.

Little threads of joy and fear shudder through me,

revelation and lightning, fireflies going off,

the blasting caps of greater detonations yet to come,

and your face is before me, apparition and aurora,

the moon reflected on undulant water,

a jewel turning in the light of itself, blue eyes, full lips,

the blonde smoke of your hair on your cheek

disappearing somewhere as if a match had just been put out,

and your smile, your beautiful, wide, forgiving smile

that seems to flow from the warmest sugars

of an abundant heart; what dawn over a lake

has ever touched me silently like that?

One look at you and I am hurled into another more spiritual dawn

like a bird bewildered into singing by the strange joy

that threatens to consume him in the soaring radiance.

And though I cannot say you, you are the secret

I discern in the stars when they stop to whisper through the trees

to the bones of the holy man humbled on the hill

of his own insignificance; and then you are the only exaltation

that can raise him up again to shine above the night.

Always within me you summon like a bell; you

draw me out of myself like a genie torn from a lamp; my blood

heaves helplessly to the urgent clock of your tides,

teems with life and washes up on the shores

of mysterious realms where you are always the enchantress of the island;

what man or creature could I not become for you,

immersed as I am in the wine of your being? You are

the fullness of woman in the prime of her mystery, the vase of your body,

the shrine of a human divinity that generation after generation

inspires adoration from the brute

that comes, awed and shy of first fire, to lay pink tulips on the staircase,

grails and goblets gathered to be filled by the reeling honey

of your presence, the fire that burns without burning

and leaves even the wind love-sick and longing for ashes. Human,

you are five petals of fire; divine, one flower.

Break, then, if I must; in loving you, I’ll break.

And should you never love me back and the air turn glass

and shatter

into a million splinters of emotion that settle at the bottom of the heart,

the broken wineglass, the crippled flower,

severed from its stem, or the moon,

scoured from its reflection on the eyeless river by clouds,

never know the laughter of your fountain, still

in every fractured piece of me

the whole of your face, in time and out, would shine

as it did in the dark before the light began. You are not a mirage

shimmering over vipers in these circumstantial sands

and I am not a candle in a hurricane. Though I love,

I know the world, its gardens and atrocities, its wounded doors

and urgent windows flowing with lace and longing.

It doesn’t have much time for itself, busy as it is,

trying to hide the loss; it’s looking for its eyes with its eyes,

its head with its head, its feet with its feet.

I’ve pulled the thorn from my heart, the worm from the rose,

the nail from my hand. I’ve gone mad and madder still,

looked up at hell out of the depths of my despair

and envied such exalted heights. And then it’s all turned radiant

for no more reason than a dream, something nameless changes,

even as we plan a way into ourselves, or out,

suddenly an unknown light breaks through, and we have our eyes.

One moment of you, one firefly, in the vastness

I was falling through and galaxies ignited all around me;

the dead branch blossomed, the singing bird came

and the day was no longer a spoonful of ashes. Call it

what you will, pour it into any cup, plastic, crystal, or clay,

or drink it from your hands: it’s still the wine, it’s still the moon; it’s still

always and only you that makes this confusion of stars and birds

in the treetops, this picture-music, this drunk dream, this tavern

that is an outcast’s shrine to joy

raise a glass

to the sun in his blood that shines at midnight.

PATRICK WHITE