OPEN WINDOW ON A SUMMER NIGHT

OPEN WINDOW ON A SUMMER NIGHT

Open window on a summer night.

Petting my cat on a cool windowsill.

Standing there in my underpants, not

caring whether anyone can see me,

it’s hot in the apartment. Though I try

to calculate the line of sight

from the street below, old enough now

to have run out of reasons to hide,

there’s a frenzy of drunks in the doorway

of a bar they’re standing in like a voice box

of cacophonous laughter, ego and hormones.

Riotous life going on all around me,

as if the wine had taken its bloodstream

off the leash and let it run wild with the dogs

that have wanted to get away all winter,

I was listening to the white noise of the dead

like the cosmic afterbirth of their microwave radiation

for any speculative pulse of a wavelength of life

to say yes, yes, yes, something survived

the initial blast that’s older than time itself.

Born and unperishing. Perishing in a womb

that tastes of life contemplating its own absence.

Throw in the deus ex machina of Hamlet’s father

wailing like the ghost of a train whistle through town

like the longing of a love lyric for revenge

that’s withered and gone brown as the leather

of the human manuscript of flesh

that prompted it in the first place,

I resurface a moment from the distractive

motherlodes of my insightful madness

like a canary in a mine on a shepherd moon

that’s tired of dying like an Orphic lighthouse

first in an underworld of beguiling eyes

that shine like jewels in the dark. I’m weary

of playing this aviary like a harp from the inside out

like the black box of a plane crash

that might afford me a clue of what it is

I’m still trying to survive like aviation fuel

in economy, wondering if I can tell by the ashes

whether I was a phoenix or a firefly.

I don’t usually give my secrets away

like a starmap but tonight I’m wearing

the whole of the nightsky for skin

and I’m more naked than I’ve been in a long time

without making my way to bed. I can feel

the moon water-gilding the leaves

of the silver Russian olives as if it were

breathing light into the lanterns of their cells

as flirtatiously assertive voices outside

overcompensate for how scared they are

there’s no star in the ore worth digging out of its grave.

Nothing to shine for. Everything lustrous and empty.

PATRICK WHITE