THE EVENING DEEPENS INTO THE LEES OF ITS MORDANCY

THE EVENING DEEPENS INTO THE LEES OF ITS MORDANCY

The evening deepens into the lees of its mordancy.

The broken pines seem more tragic. The corpses in the cemetery

less lifelike. Spirits move over the face of the leaf littered grass

as if someone were throwing thousands of loveletters away in disgust.

The darkness is more threatening. You can feel the presence of the dead

slipping under the doors and the cracks in the windowsill

like smoke and cold wind and life threatening protestations

of undying love. Not a rumour of sound from the town.

The wind is holed up somewhere in a bar that doubles as a lair

knocking another one down for the obliterate illiterate night ahead.

Recite. Recite. Recite. The unlettered prophet was told

by the angel of light. I don’t recite so much as I let it write me

into the destiny scribbled on the lines of my forehead,

birds coming and going like musical notes on hydro line staves

with ivy treble clefs coiling around the pole like medical snakes.

Baby, I’m a caduceus. You be the dove above it all.

The silence pregnant with manifestation. The furnace

has stopped cracking its knuckles. The flanks

of the American flag above the real estate office downstairs

has stopped flexing its muscles at the command of the wind

and the horse whisperers are out in style trying to calm things down

to a ghastly serenity. The stillness is a bread knife

cocked diagonally on the white vinyl kitchen sink counter

like a sabre of the new moon sitting there the koan

of a blank but focused stare with an essential existential question to ask you

about whether you want to live or die by seppiku.

The mirrors are hiding their eyes. Someone’s in bed

bleeding to death because of a loveletter they’d just read

that said life was better off without you falling in love with it

all over again with the unbearable pain and joy

of having to leave it this way through a hole in the wall

they just painted over to sell the thralls to a new slumlord

from the underworld who keeps bragging about his dirty jewels

and excoriating the fools who are not dead enough yet to appreciate them.

PATRICK WHITE