BEGINNING AND END

BEGINNING AND END

Beginning and end. Two hinges flapping like lapwings

on the same gate to nowhere at anytime, both wishing

they were born sundials. Encores of a grand entrance

trying to make a graceful exit toward an abysmally open door.

Past and future. One foot on shore, one in the boat.

The moment’s always two-faced about these things

because it has no identity of its own, not even

a specious passport. Time must be Palestinian.

I wish everyone a backward blessing as I’m walking away

with no malice in my heart and the moon smiles

like a good-natured scar knowingly overhead.

If you practise life among the dead long enough

you learn to master your own failure, evolution

in the life of the mind, not a fountain or a housewell

but a watershed of inspiration, a meteor shower

crashing like an amber chandelier we’re all dancing under

in a glass house of frozen tears throwing stones

at the mirrors of the telescopes peeping through their keyholes.

Is it a curse or a blessing to be the anti-hero of zero

and where would Zorro go to find a mask for that?

God, I’m sick of people telling me to be myself

like the sky and the sea. I’ve seen both when

they looked a lot more than anxious to me and it wasn’t

just another lie about the pathetic fallacy

of empathizing wholly with your own mental weather

be it hell or halcyon as a kingfisher flying low

over a million suns dancing on the eyelids of the waves

like a stunt pilot gliding along just for the easy sake of it.

Ask any flower. You got it you flaunt it. A lot of bees

depend on that. If you want to look further afield.

Show me a star or a firefly with terminal stage-fright.

Even the lachrymose avalanches of the slothful candles

unburden themselves by turning into light and shadow.

And lest you underestimate the cosmic immensities

in even the smallest fires of life, remember,

a single flame’s enough to be the flightfeather of a dragon

with the wingspan of these days and nights on earth

aimlessly unfolding in an expanding universe

like a loveletter from an empty envelope that ends in solitude

when the many return to the one, or oblivion, whatever

came first like a hidden secret that wished to be known

and has heard and seen enough for awhile to appall her curiosity.

But not to despair. The second innocence of the return journey

is sweeter than the apple boom of the first. You can taste

stars in the honey, music in the eyes of the wine

when the one transcends itself back into the many

and every voice reflects the echo of the silence

like the secret signage of a cursive alphabet of sacred syllables

shining on the waters of life like a blessing in tears

and we were always ten thousand poems in arrears.

PATRICK WHITE