SURREALISTIC HARMONIES OF LOVE

SURREALISTIC HARMONIES OF LOVE

Surrealistic harmonies of love fill the dead air

of the sugar-craving heart detoxing like the thorns

of a rose from the bloodbank of beauty that was

withdrawn from it like a fix in the spiral arm

of a sea star addicted to the radiance of the Milky Way

like a pulse of fire bleeding out albino caulking

from a poppy that died honourably by opening its veins.

What dreams may come, of unimaginable tenderness

and the affection of many dusks that glowed

like votive candles in the niche of shadows

that once hallowed the mere vision of a lover’s face

like the calyx of a waterlily your eyes drank from

like the holy grail the moon’s been looking for all along.

Crude truces are not a substitute sweetener

for the sophisticated tastes of a mystic peace

between you and the universe that’s never

been declared a defeat or a victory but nevertheless

leaves nothing unsaid between you and another

and though you could still hear the echoes of the snakes

hunting stars in your housewells like the occult wavelengths

in the visionary telescopes that put their eyes out

like broken mirrors to see prophetically better in the dark,

how dangerously courageous joy can be

when we turn it on each other like garden hoses

even as this house of life we’re leased to

burns down around us for want of water

to keep the most festive mirages of night

from becoming unsubstantiated liars in their sleep.

I can see the wake of wildflowers in the starfields

I once walked through resurgently in the spring

through a gate large-leaved soft basswood trees

towered over like a sacred grove of paintbrushes

the crows came home like the backlit ashes of the day

to roost in like a choir of minor nightmares at a black mass

when love grew fearful as a sign of deep devotion

there was a funeral bell on the dark side of the mirror

the blazing of so much light blinds it to and sets about

unravelling the wicks of its shadows and flames

like flying carpets of mystic happiness the moon wove

in the spare time of its crone phase, as Sinbad the Sailor

candles like a parachute in the bloodlines of hapless Icarus.

Eros and death. Thanatos and life in the same breath.

Copulative food for thought when the hourglass alarm clock

on the back of the black widow is timed to wake up

like a food chain in the middle of a climax

that ensures the continuance of life by ravishing

Daddy like the living host of a cornucopious pantry.

In time, by repetition, you might come to add

a diminutive to the most significant events of love

that inspired you like a flute intoxicated by snake music

before you switched from pica to piccolo

and your serpent fire began to sound more like an asp

buried in the sand, than the swaying wavelengths

of cobras in exstasis. Diminish the black magic

of your Medusan transfixions as just another one

of the facts of life that break like the filaments

of the spiderwebs that once lit up like dreamcatchers

in the dawn of elementally mysterious beatitudes of light.

If not the facts, then, at least, the acts of life

erected like obelisks of scar tissue to commemorate

the intimate war wounds of a crusading heart

in the bird-stained patinas of a public gravestone

that says we died significantly, though over the course

of time, the spell of the dream grammar wears off

and the logic of metaphor is like a tree ring

of fossilized rain buried in the dead heartwood

of the syntax we recollect our lives in the tranquillity

of dead languages that ebb and neap like a sea of shadows

on the moon, so, ghosts of who we once were

to one another, despite these seances we hold

with ourselves that can fairly say, yes, we died,

we gave it all up, you can retrospectively tell

by the depths of the solitude in our eyes

no one’s ever fully satisfied they know for sure for what.

Among the dragons of life, if the fires of love

don’t end in ashes, you have reason to doubt

the sincerity of the withered star buried in the urns

of the rosehips that have shed their petals like eyelids,

their scales like feathers in the balance

of a trial constellation worthy of all the trouble

you went through to keep on shining for lightyears

after there was nothing left to burn

but your unidentifiable fingertips like butterflies

in the sulphuric atmospheres between Venus and Vulcan

when your tears fall like acid rain on the firepits

of the scorched flowers that immolated themselves

like an Arab spring in the black market gardens

of the secrets you keep to yourself like swords

you once fell upon like wild irises pressed between

the covers of a book that’s never going to open

its mouth again like a nightbird between dawn and dusk

without celebrating the rootfires of the pain in a lovesong

even the floodwaters of life aren’t deep enough to put out.

PATRICK WHITE