THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, down
the hollow stairs, steel-toed
construction boots,
the tenant next door who lives a wall
away, five a.m.,
off to work in the dark again, slam,
the mechanical arm
pulling the door shut as if something
were concluded
like the end of a hardcover book that
pulled it off,
a gavel, the decisive beginning of a
chronic routine
that must be endured as if he were in
charge
of something trivial unrelated to his
life.
Out on the streets, Sisyphus with a
snow shovel
scraping the sidewalks third time
tonight
in and out of the infernal spotlights
in the tungsten stained cones under the
lamp posts
alone, alone, alone, with just me
looking down
from my window, wondering what
desperation
drives him to take his job so
seriously.
It’s the man that ennobles the work,
not
the work the man. Same way with words.
Truck engines wake the day up before
the birds.
Crunch of car tires on ice. Plumage
of carbon monoxide, exorcisms of breath
through the mouth, unrevealing fans of
visibility
on the defogging windshields as one
vehicle
after another pulls up to the atm
machine
in the sterile temple to money across
the street
as if they were lighting candles in
code
like the name of an unknown god in the
niche
of a push button shrine that
photographs
every move they make as it welcomes
everyone
the same, like a priest at the door of
a church,
electronically. Work should be the form
of their worship, not the fruits of
their labour.
I’m Upanishadic that way. I abhor the
numbing
of the human spirit. I loath seeing
jackasses
leading eagles around on a leash.
Hooded ospreys
on the arms of falconers assuming their
virtues
by proxy. Puppet masters pulling their
spinal cords
like the strings of a kite tugging at
its life to cut loose
even if it means flaming out in the
powerlines
or falling back to earth like an
unsuccessful proto-type
of what it was born to be, endowed
with mind, heart, imagination and
spirit
and the lifespan of snow on a mine
field,
or the lighthouse of a firefly in a
hurricane of stars
for greater events than the tyranny of
greed
and circumstance allow. Wholly human
and free
by birthright to explore the mystery of
their own lives
creatively, with only their own hearts
to answer to.
Government by dead metaphor. Reality
the consensus
of a habit. We don’t walk anywhere
without
coffins on our feet like shoes in a
cemetery.
What can other species expect when we
squander
each other on nothing, on death, on a
waste
of the wonder that we’re here at all
in the presence
of so much else that managed it as well
as us
by doing what it knows how to be best.
Me? I got up because I couldn’t
sleep, falling
into the crack between a dream and
being awake,
lying in the dark of a false dawn, my
mind trying
to pick out the chords of the
picture-music by ear
in a cosmic collaboration of gestural
constellations
jamming with diamond spiders on blood
red jazz guitars
carved out of the heartwood of a mad
man
troubled by compassion for the extreme
chaos
of conditioned consciousness, as he
answers the call
of an unsummoned inspiration, to resign
himself
to getting up estranged by his own
will, sit
in the interrogative glare of a
one-eyed computer
in the dark, and write it all down as
if
that were somehow crucially important
somewhere
to someone who’s never felt this way
before
without feeling so alone, so alone,
with messages
they received lightyears before they
understood them
from someone crazed enough to risk his
mind to know
while there’s time yet to listen
unintelligibly open
to what was being said by a voice out
of the void
as if that’s what he did, without
making a sound.
PATRICK WHITE
