YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME

YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME

Your eyes are a blue crack of sky to me at the bottom

of a very deep mine. And when your heart shines down

it’s not a flashlight but a majestic sunset I’m looking up at.

Under this avalanche of gravestones

I’m trying to sing the dead back to life.

I’m beguiling the gibbering shades with picture music

that sings like deadly nightshade

to the bruised darkness within me

people keep stepping out of

like the ghosts of white nocturnal orchids

pale as the ghoulish moon on the limbs

of the naked dead trees the herons build their nests in.

It’s the function of a prophetic Orphic skull

to walk among the dark jewels of the underworld

with all the eyes open in its blood

but none to see into the blue sky above

what you’re looking at when when you

see how blind I am to the wavelengths copulating in your eyes

like the twining of two snakes on a caduceus

topped with the snowflake of a dove.

Hermes Trismegistus for a companion guide

and a little girl who leads me around like a seeing eye dog.

I’m sort of the Teresian Orpheus of my own hybridization

who keeps falling back like Sisyphus with a gravestone

when nothing’s coming back above ground

but the stars in another round of your zodiacally clear eyes.

PATRICK WHITE