A ROCK IN THE CURRENT, A SKULL IN THE RIVER

A ROCK IN THE CURRENT, A SKULL IN THE RIVER

A rock in the current, a skull in the river,

time patiently washing away the sidereal silt of my mind

as if insight were alluvial. You can’t keep

what you won’t give away so fling it from you

by the handful, phases of the moon, apple bloom,

fire seeds, eyes that looked through you once into

the secret life of the abyss that glyphed love lyrics

and occult zodiacs for homeless exiles across

the multitudinous firmament like a mystic tattooist

inking ice ages in caves for spiritual Neanderthals

alarmed by the approach of a tedious apocalypse,

dead shamans at the feet of defecating rhinos,

and the hunting magic that expressed the inner life

of slayer and slain in images of blood and burnt bone,

hemorrhagic red ochres of midnight, extinct

as the grammar of fire that once adorned their torches.

You see how I get carried away by the blackwater

of my visions sweeping me downstream

from these arcane symbols of self I can barely remember

except as the vague stations of an ongoing shapeshifter

who knows that all he has in common with time

is its flowing. Evolution isn’t a popularity contest

but some recollections are more violet or vermillion

than others, and I recall the features of several women,

a few kids and an occasional friend who were

more indelible watercolours in the rain than others.

Rainbows made manifest by an auspicious eclipse,

starclusters in the eyes of radiant snakepits,

the brass rings of moondogs on lunar doors

that opened like the first crescent of the knife

you held to your wrist to purge the bad spirits

as you fought for your life in an undeclared holy war

of transfiguring omens trying to seek out

the unsayable syllables of the name of your god.

Estranged lovers of mine still clinging like exposed roots

to the river banks of my shoreless afterlife

moving on in a muddle of stars leaving

dolmens and gravestones in my wake

to say where I once stopped long enough to die

to erect a constellation as a wayward direction

of where I’d gone for those breaking trail

into the available dimensions beyond

the last handprint I spray painted on the wall

of a gate you could pass through to the other side.

Enter at your own peril. No proxies or strawmen,

no voodoo dolls or false idols, no puppet masters,

no witchdoctors with elk antlers or candelabra on their heads

make it this far without being divested of their identities

like shoes at the thresholds of an interminable firewalk

that insists you take your winged heels off

like no vehicles past this point of departure

and walk barefoot over the stars scattered like thorns

along the path of a dangerous initiation no one’s ever mastered.

Here in this mindless realm genuine achievement is measured

by the aspirations of brilliant failures courageous enough

to overturn the sacrificial altars of their conscious expertise

and risk the untutored innocence and polymorphous madness

of their ancient childhoods again, the crazy wisdom

of realizing even on your deathbed as you violate

the first rule of your worst taboo, true to your disobedience

to the end, there isn’t enough time to grow old

when you’re on the run with all you can be carried away by

as eternity opens its coffin like an eyelid on the deathmask of time

and reveals the continuity of all your cosmic beginnings

expanding like a universe that wouldn’t be caught dead

standing still when there’s so much fire left forever to steal from.

Go ask the stars, if you need the affirmation of angels,

where they got their light from, or the demons,

the shining ones, who hide their radiance in shadows,

if you need earthbound followers to believe in your own eyes.

O fool, in your heart of hearts, admit what you already know.

Life is an evanescent stillness that’s been transcending itself in motion

like a secret that wanted to be known when there was no one

to listen but a void with the imagination to create

a selfless reflection of the kind of empty awareness that could.

So we all die laughing in the lifemask of a mirror

that’s never seen its own eyes except as these nightskies

of fireflies and stars we all disappear into like creators

into their own works, like children at play with our bones.

PATRICK WHITE