DARKNESS,
LET ME ENTER
Darkness,
let me enter. Oblivion, open your arms.
Sweet
liberty, lengthen my chain by light years.
Venus
in the Pleiades, let me feel your charms.
I
want to ride the light, o yes I do, as far as I can
toward
some flowering of the mystery
I
can add myself to and bloom as the stars do.
My
most intimate familiar, solitude, eras of it,
yet
it’s never known my name. My best feature
once
you get pass the indignation and the anger,
compassion.
And though love seems to me
the
sum of many hearts, trying to express itself
as
one, when have I not been a doorway to the dead?
When
have I ever preferred my happiness
even
as my last rainbow bridge went up in flames
and
there was no where else to cross before the falls,
to
that of the ironic beatitudes of the forbidden and the blessed?
Make
me a star again one day with a few habitable planets,
each
with at least one moon that can make me crazy as this one.
Promise?
Promise me it will be so and mean it.
I
will continue. I will keep on. I will endure like a mountain
that
never capitulated volcanically to my own rage.
I’ll
walk the road standing up. I’ll traverse it on my knees.
I’ll
be the nightbird. The green bough. The apple bloom.
I’ve
learned. I’ll listen. And when I’m overwhelmed by words,
I’ll
give you my voice and let you speak for yourself.
Whoever,
whatever, you are not or you are,
though
I hear you’re too ineffable to get to know,
should
the day ever come you want to disclose yourself
like
a hidden secret that wants to be known,
I’ll
understand that, I’ll be the night in your mirror
that
shows you four hundred billion stars in the eyes
of
as many life forms and more in the multiverse
than
you can see without being astonished by the beauty
of
all the secrets you’ve kept to yourself for light years.
Even
if I’m just talking to myself like a waterclock
pouring
my mindstream from one ear into another,
whether
you’re there or not, or just the matriculated anima
of
a pineal gland projected onto a holographic space time continuum,
and
my spirit be no more than my own breath
condensing
on the diminishing window of this cold sky
where
I write the name of someone I’ve never met
with
a frost-bit finger, longing for encounters I won’t regret,
let
me flow into your awareness like a wavelength
into
a river of light or let me burn in the immutable darkness
a
firefly of thought, a thread of lightning, a distant star,
a
thinning fragrance of a wildflower you might have known
a
long time ago that reminds you of someone
so
many changes away from anyone you’d recognize today.
I’m
not looking for someone to whine to.
I’ve
been omnidirectional since I turned forty-five
so
I don’t need anyone to tell me where I’m going.
I’m
not looking for a soft shoulder of the road to cry on.
After
so many nights of laying my head
on
this hard rock pillow of a world
that’s
refeathering itself in scales and razorblades
I’m
not dissing the occult wisdom of my consolation dreams.
The
way it seems is the way it appears. Let it.
I
grew up on the streets, drastically. I know how
to
break a mirror in case of a catastrophe.
Just
let me pretend for awhile out here in the woods
where
I always feel as a human it’s the first day
of
a kid in the schoolyard until I make friends with an owl
or
the occasional, curious bush wolf wondering
what
I’m doing so far off my natural turf, and why,
just
like a dog from the city abandoned on a farm
I
feel so disowned sometimes I should learn
to
snarl back at the moon when it bares its fangs at me
instead
of baying its praises to the rest of the asylum.
Just
let me suppose for awhile that a poet
isn’t
the orphan of the absurd, that there’s
a
bloodline of meaning that still seeps into everything
like
the dye of a black rose in the night that steeps the heart
in
all frequencies and colours of the clear light of the void
that
tastes like the mystic poetry of the waters of life
on
the tongue of a stranger who’s just wandered in from the desert,
his
lips dusty with the stars he’s been drinking
from
an hourglass rimed with sand and salt.
I
don’t want to receive everything only to find out
I
prayed for nothing, so I won’t, but if you’re
the
shapeshifting creatrix of subtle intelligence
I
intuit you might be sometimes when I’m alone
with
the stars like a childhood that hasn’t forgotten me,
and
there’s a sudden breeze out of nowhere
that
grazes the back of my neck like a sabre of the moon
so
close I could swear we were lovers in another life,
light
a candle for me somewhere in the universe,
and
you be the light by which the light is known.
Show
me your smile like moonrise on the lake.
Let
me see your eyes in the rain, so inter-reflected
they
can’t help shining out of everything as if
no
one could keep you a secret for long, except you,
and
for the moment, at least, I’m not accepting this.
Don’t
care if I’m painting a lifemask to put on an abyss
of
molecular indifference. You should see the tears
I’ve
smeared under my eyes to save face
with
the sacred clowns I’ve been from time to time.
You
keep your distance and I’ll play hard to get as well.
You
take one step toward me, and I’ll go the rest of the way.
Devotion’s
always been a weakness of mine. One sign
and
I’ll light up like an esoteric zodiac that just went electric.
I’ll
meet you on a bridge at midnight, and I won’t forget
when
fire comes down to the water’s edge, fire
has
to use the bridge as well. Just tell me that you care,
if
not for me, for all these humans that die like roadkill
stunned
by the highbeams of oncoming circumstance
as
if nothing in life, however rightly or wrongly,
however
young or old the blood on the hands of the clock
that
kills them as if they were as devoid of characteristics as you
could
console them for the loss of what they dared to hold close.
That’s
the gamma ray burst of the protest that has kept us apart
since
my innocence first started bleeding in childhood
for
the impersonality that mutilates 3.5 billion years of evolution,
the
sum of all our infirmities and strengths, as if there were
nothing
to cherish or venerate in us, like a homeless drunk
beaten
to death on a fire-escape in a back alley just for the fun of it.
That’s
the thorn in my heart. I watched my mother
half
beaten to death three times by my father before I was seven
and
it wasn’t you, it was me, that picked up the ax
to
put a stop to it. Who could aspire to heaven
when
that’s going on in the snakepit at your feet?
How
do you return to your toy truck after
the
cop cars and the ambulance has left with your mother
and
the absence is so terrifying even the nightmares
don’t
dare echo an answer that isn’t an atrocity of guile
that
lies to a child about the good that will come out of it.
I’m
sixty-four now and ever since my eyes were pryed open
like
the petals of a flower that wasn’t ready to bloom yet,
everywhere
I look, the indignity and ferocity
of
intrusive happenstance inflicting itself upon life
with
a few intermittent truces to lick our wounds
like
razorblades in candied apples. Yes, I stand my ground.
Knock
me down. I’ll get up again. And I’ll carry my pain
in
my heart, in my voice, in my art, my blood, my arms,
in
the urn of everything I’ve ever cherished
like
a silver eagle, a placard, a birthmark back into the tear gas
of
the last crusade that never had a chance, if I must,
until
the human divinity that broke the seal of our suffering,
small
as our light may be now, leaves an indelible impression
upon
space and time, or you, if you’re there,
like
the labyrinth of a fingerprint you can’t ignore.
And
I’m not asking for an emergency exit,
just
take the gate off the entrance and let everyone in
on
the secret of why everything seems so brutally true
in
the bright vacancy, dark abundance of your absence,
and
I’ll dance with you in a garden on the moon
until
the lemons turn blue as the wild grapes in late October
when
you shall be my folly. And I shall be your fool.
PATRICK
WHITE
