SPRING RAIN IN THE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING

SPRING RAIN IN THE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING

Spring rain in the small hours of the morning,

exlixir of leaves, tears of anthracite on the asphalt streets,

drumming circles rippling out of every pulse of the heart

that makes an impact, ghosts of gasoline thrown

on the pyres of the rootfires trying to ignite the lampposts

that have never known what it was to shine on their own

like daffodils and crocuses, trout lilies and wood sorrel,

without someone else telling them when and when not to.

Water music in the iron vocal cords of the gutter

free-flowing into its own underworld echo

like a mind stream making found art out of

accumulated garbage that announces it has no soul

though the dolmens of the pygmy fire-hydrants

stubbornly refuse to believe it. Some nights so brutal

the moon knocks its teeth out trying to take a bite

out of the curb like a crust of bread made of cement.

Corpses of soiled swans sculpted by the rain

lying like road kill in the parking lot of Mac’s Milk

like a ghoulish leper colony in fluorescent light.

The powerlines weeping like mandalic spiderwebs

on their own, melancholic dreamcatchers letting it out

like broken necklaces of tears filling the moats

around the throats of crystal skulls losing it

like glaciers to global warming, prophetic windows

thawing out their frost-bitten eyes by disappearing

from sight as the cedars sweep chandeliers of light

from their wings as they try to take off the lake,

the rain packing down the starmud of the path

they were meant to take, their feet on the earth,

their heads in the clouds like totem poles and pagodas.

Soaked to the skin, the bloom of the rose with thorns

like silver buckles off my black leather jacket

heavy and sodden as the flesh of a rat snake

that’s been run over by some stupid farmer

as it was coming out of hibernation like a wavelength

pariahed by rainbows, as water droplets tap

their fingers on the rim of my gangster hat

tilted on its axis like a total eclipse of the rings

of Saturn trying to look tougher than it actually is,

there’s nowhere to go but down to the rising river

where the willows are rinsing their hair

under the faucet of a kitchen sink the way

my sisters used to before our blood parted

like the waters of the Red Sea that never closed up

behind me like a wound that’s gone on hemorrhaging

for lightyears like hydrocephalic Al Gol in Perseus

holding his sword down like the reflection of a headlight

trembling in tribute to the ladies of the lake who hold

their bare arms out like the boughs of drowned trees

to receive it. The snowman with eyes of bituminous coal

disappears in a bath of warm, carboniferous tears

that appeal like black diamonds to the evergreens

for understanding and compassion not to come too late

as I open the floodgates of my heart like a lockmaster

white water rafting the spring runoff in a lifeboat

he’s trying to bail out like a waterclock that’s jumped

an hour ahead of itself to wander in the light

like the narrative theme of a real dream character

trying not to drown in its own mindstream

this close to waking up like the ghost of a sleepwalker.

No one in my bed I long to return to like a shipwreck

No poem in my heart I’m trying to protect

like the dishevelled bouquet of a wet matchbook

trying to keep love alive like a dying art long enough

to catch fire like the vernal equinox in the imagination

of an underground flowergirl setting my roots aflame

with blue hyacinths and wild irises of tantric sex.

My solitude seeks no mercy from the rain.

No dilution of my blood that runs like a watercolour of pain

vainly trying to unskein the black and red threads

of a passion for life from the bass riff of a death wish

blinded by the approaching light of the eerie beauty

of the black sun eclipsed at nadir in the Circlet of the Western Fish.

PATRICK WHITE