I DIDN'T MAKE A HOLY COLOURING BOOK OUT OF THE COSMIC SCRIPTURE OF MY LIFE

I DIDN’T MAKE A HOLY COLOURING BOOK OUT OF THE COSMIC SCRIPTURE OF MY LIFE

I didn’t make a holy colouring book out of the cosmic scripture of my life

but I sure liked painting it. I’ve got so much respect for stars

redshifting into longer wavelengths of thought.

Meditative x-rays cogitating on themselves as if in each one them

you could see a blood cell or the seapoppy of a passionate B.C. Sunset

crumpled like a tropical duvet of clouds on the far horizon

of everything where the sun goes down to die.

And be born again if the Egyptians get it right. Maybe.

Hell’s pretty this time of year. The moon blooms in winter don’t forget.

Houris around the fountains of Salsabil. With coral lips

that no man has ever kissed before. And veils, veils, veils

everywhere with eyes behind them like star globes

at three in the morning out in this desert of stars somewhere

the sphinxes let down their hair like a henna oilslick

that’s cut like a crystalline goblet apprenticed to a prophetic skull like mine.

I like them as women and they way they keen. So convincing

I believe it. Mean grief. Savagely indignant widows enraged

like queens of the pride disturbed by the funny smell of death.

Seven parts, eclipse. Three parts, leonine. Mix. It’s an elixir

of poetry and madness embodied in the persons of Laila and Majnun.

For mad poets the sun shines at midnight. And the moon.

And it maybe that death is no more

than a pragmatic mystic who has learned to use the silence well.

PATRICK WHITE