MY DEATH WAS A QUIET EVENT

MY DEATH WAS A QUIET EVENT

My death was a quiet event.

I entered the abyss with all

the constituents of the first sign of life

to give voice to the silence

that’s been ripening within me for years.

Green bough. Dead branch. Same song.

The apple falls. The moon blossoms.

Everytime we open them, the worlds

sprout from our eyes like seeds.

Close them and it’s an excuse to dream

of sleepwalking on stars like the firmament

of our own breath expiring

like a vapour of light on the autumn air,

a tale of smoke, a road of ghosts,

the purple passage of a fragrance

from the fires of life that bloom

out of the void like stars and wildflowers

deep within where we cast the shadows of the mirages

we are. Poppies in a wheatfield. Fires

in the desert like red-shifting stars burning

with the life of meaning as if shining itself

were meaning enough to engender us

like the myths of our own imaginations.

Life’s not solid, it’s as real as any nightmare

that never came true, any dream that ever kept

its vow to you. Grow vast. Teach space

not to be confined by itself. Grow deep.

Encourage time to root in your starmud

like a river system of lightning flowing

into the great night seachange of your awareness

as wise as the salmon are, we’re not fish

swimming upstream in a waterclock to be

born again to copulate and die. We’re

the sacred syllables of sparrows in a fountain

washing the dust of the worlds off our wings

after many flights, joy-riding the wind,

after many ice-ages in the hourglass of winter,

like the crumbs of a dream from our eyes

when we wake up to the fruits of life

we keep sowing in our graves like the silver bows

of these lifeboats that keep on ploughing

the seas of the moon as the siloes of our afterlives

are filled behind us with the windfall of our flowering.

PATRICK WHITE