THE NIGHT THAT HEALS THE BROKEN DAY

THE NIGHT THAT HEALS THE BROKEN DAY

The night that heals the broken day.

The dark that mends the shattered lamp.

The moon that salves the puncture wound.

The star that welds the injured eye

into a stronger bond than the original vision.

The silence that tempers the battered heart

in its own tears like a sword of light it fell upon.

The word that tends the forsaken voices

in our ears, like water whispering

into a dry wishing well on the moon

or bees and hummingbirds come like shibboleths

and sacred syllables to the larkspur and hollyhocks.

Down by the river where there are no mistakes

I can sense the long sorrows of the willows

making preparations for spring. The dead branch

troubled by a dream of leaves it didn’t expect.

The ancient hills washing their own corpses

laid out against the skyline like anonymous chthonic gods

led out of the labyrinth of their watersheds and roots

by melting snow welling up in their eyes

like the first signs of life coming out a coma of permafrost.

There’s a renewed hope in the lyrics

of the night birds exorcising the echoes

and mirages of this albino desert of ice

from their leprous solitude growing back

new limbs and flightfeathers at the approach

of the vernal equinox, moved to sing more earnestly

for reasons quite beyond them

because there’s no logic among the muses

anyone can follow like music rationally for very long

without getting lost in a starmap of metaphors

like a field fire burning off the short straws

in the hands of isolated scarecrows on nightwatch

all winter long, as Virgo offers them all

another chance to feel the wind caressing

an ocean of starwheat again like a new riff in the urn

of a greening guitar sprouting out of its ashes

like the first note of orchards, windfalls and harvests to come.

Soon the sun will treble the clefs

of the wild grapevines like tendrils

and the mushy raspberry flesh of the old women

grow firm again and the green-stick fractures

in the hospitals of the birch groves

raise their branches up to the sky

like wands of wine witching for stars.

And the young will be exhilarated by seeing

everything for the very first time

like new lamps for old and the genie within

understanding why it’s cast aside by their elation

will smile with the affectionate wisdom

of a third eye that’s been watching

this riot of apple bloom and trout lilies for light years.

And the rain will root like wild columbine

on the skulls of the moss-pated rocks

and the cochineal crocuses in the dilated pupils

of the wide-eyed snow will put their petals

together in prayer like eyelids appealing

to a stranger in passing like white water

over the rocks in the wake of his heart

and say, hey, mister, please, we could use those tears

if you’ve got no further use for them. Come here

and help us turn the waterwheels of the eternal recurrence.

Or lend us your breath, if you’ve forgotten what it’s for

to enhance the shining tenderly burning in our starmud

by blowing on the kindling of the fires of life

like a volunteer arsonist attending a nesting pyre

of yarrow sticks from the Book of Changes

we can lie down upon like the phoenix of the sumac

refeathering its skeletal wings in fledgling flames.

The ant that repairs the tunnels and doorways

of its snow-covered barrow to let the light dispel

the shadows from the bone boxes of its dead

like a stem cell happy to be at work again.

The red-tailed hawk repairing the burnt rafters

of its last sky burial by shouldering the wind

upon its shoulders as if the earth weren’t

such a heavy burden to bear as it sometimes seems.

The scarlet cardinal that kept the memory

of lost poppies alive like the lantern of a dream

burning in the windowsills of long, dark nights

of returning one day like a prodigal

to the firepits of hell to discover

they’ve been sown by the dipeptides of meteors

like circular gardens bordered by

Martian fieldstones lying like the kissing stones

of black Kaabas in Antarctica to celebrate

the renewal of life and the return of the light

to the radiant gateways of the trilithons of Stonehenge

where any place you shine like a firefly on the horizon

face to face with the night is the true direction of prayer.

The pine that sweeps the needles from the stairs

like the rusty eyelashes of shipwrecked compasses.

The blue shift of the Canada geese beating their wings

like a drum circle of wavelengths on the eye of the lake.

The garter snake that slept for an eternity

with its tail in its mouth ungnarling the knots in its hair

to seek its own equilibrium like water

in the tree rings of a warmer rain

rippling through archival calenders

like a higher frequency of life in its heartwood.

The thorns that stung like locust trees

beginning to take down the Chinese lanterns

of the hives of the paper wasps and replace them

with the blossoming pinatas of honey bees

singing in a beatific cloud of unknowing

to the metamorphic glory of compassionate mysteries.

The dragonflies drying their wings in the light

that wipes the tears from the eyes

of the rubble of fortune-cookies they emerge from

like gerry-mandered shrines of transformation

with stained-glass windows cracking like old paint

to open themselves as wide as they can

like an aubade of pagan totems at midnight

to the lifespan of the sun enlightening the moonrise

with prophetic fire flowering in the eye sockets of an eclipsed skull,

chandeliers of votive candles burning in the sacred niches

of a holy wall of secret messages riddled with nesting swallows

like waterlilies and love letters from the distant stars.

Breaking like the womb of a beaver dam

with the waters of life flooding the roads

we have to take to make our way here as we are,

the broken tea pot of Aquarius that mends

the continental shards of the rifts of old ostrakons

like Pangea in the spring with scars of gold.

PATRICK WHITE