YOU HAVE TO SEE WITH YOUR HEART INTO THE NATURE OF LIFE

YOU HAVE TO SEE WITH YOUR HEART INTO THE NATURE OF LIFE

You have to see with your heart into the nature of life.

Your eyes will only get you as far as the front porch.

Like a moth drawn to the light. Mesmerized by the brightness

but not shining by a light of your own. Crazy moth,

no one’s ever wrong it’s just a matter of degree, not

kind of right you want to be, the kind that’s blinded

by the dazzle of the radiance of your own blazing eyebeams

or the subtler moonrise of the longings that overwhelm you

with the haunting sadness of the unanswered nightbirds

that keep calling out to the stars as you do

like the ghost of a candle at a seance that’s gone out

so you can see better into the unknown darkness

that is as much behind you as it is ahead. Even

these blue-blooded words bleeding like the eyes of peasants

down this page, toys in the hands of the dead they’re buried with

deep in the past and not the Rameseum of royal magnificence

we built to last significantly like the starpath of a zodiac

yesterday walks on the plank of a straight and narrow tomorrow

for following its own mindstream through this life

of half-lights and shadows, the blue-greys and phantom greens

of the irises that beatify our pupils with the moondogs

of non-denominational, alla prima haloes around the blackholes

the visionaries among us who merely dream

keep pearl diving into like starfish reaching out

for the singularity of love on the bottom that makes them feel

as if they were resurfacing with it in another world

the same as this one, but unrecognized like a star

a dimension ahead of its light as everything passes into future.

Until you feel the lightning root in you like dendritic black matter

you transplanted in exile like a flower you brought from home

you’ll never see your own reflection in the black mirror

that shines brighter and deeper than the white one

that pales like the world in comparison with the dawn

of the sun that shines from within you at midnight.

Until you stop mistaking fireflies along the coasts

of consciousness for lighthouses you can navigate by

by letting the lifeboat on the shipwreck of life

you’re clinging to like a wooden mermaid at the bowsprit

take your height above the horizon for the right ascension

and declination of the interspatial, non-temporal direction

you’re turning into like a headwind without a sail,

you’ll always feel like a cult of pleading seagulls

winging it in suspended animation in the wake

of the rest of your life while the foghorns bellow

Jurassically in the tarpits of an alien shepherd moon.

And I won’t blame you if you don’t understand

what all these metaphors are trying so hard not to mean

as a way of leaving the door open for the light to get out

of that aviary you cover every night with an executioner’s hood

as if you were judging your voice by the imperfectible standards

of the lyrics you have yet sing on the green boughs

and dead branches of life that’s always making a comeback

like a has-been instead of swinging back and forth

like a trapeze artist afraid of heights on your perch

as you do when you come before me like a water sylph

acting as if you were some kind of pendulous, grandmother clock,

tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, the dust on the windowsill

and you bored to death like a comet portending

you’re just another dead goldfish in a huge hourglass

of quicksand. Don’t let the panic of being young

dominate any stage of your life you’re on tour with at the moment.

And don’t insult me by thanking me for something

I haven’t given you. Everything’s of equal value

when you’re free to be as worthless as you please.

PATRICK WHITE  

SO FAR FROM HOME FOR SO LONG

SO FAR FROM HOME FOR SO LONG

So far from home for so long I’m beginning to feel

I belong to this self-imposed exile that keeps whispering

like the miles and the stars and the far off voices

of the waterbirds lifting off unnamed lakes at night,

move on, move on, through the next gate, doorway,

field, rite of passage, into a deeper, darker space

where you can hear the loneliness of the light

singing to itself as its fingertips read your face like Braille

to see what kind of man you were before sorrow taught you

your eyes were bells of water hanging from a blade

of stargrass that never really knew what it was crying about

except for the hidden mercy in letting go into a farewell

it remains to be seen will last forever or not.

You haven’t come far enough if you can still

recognize yourself as the stranger that left home

as an old man or woman apprenticed to a child

you couldn’t discipline like an impetuous life

that admits of no masters. And takes possession of none.

Once you get over the mixed emotions of the tears

in your eyes at a blissful insight into your liberation,

the amazing moonrise over the birch groves,

the broken menagerie of an ice-storm’s chandeliers

you discovered reflecting as much light in pieces

as it did when it hung like rain from the lobe of a lover’s ear.

And then comes a night that closes over everything

you could possibly dream of being, like an iron eyelid,

and you’re chilled to the marrow by the mystic terror

of your cosmic solitude, and your heart is a bucket

the bottom fell out of as if time had stopped its waterclock.

And there’s no plausible way to say what’s happening

to you, except you’re alone in the world like a secret

you can’t even share with yourself because you’ve run out

of opposites and your shadows are no longer attached

to the light that cast them. Unruly forms bite their tongues

like lightning rods, and the silence stops stammering

in metaphors that reveal the dissimilarities of their likeness

to everything that preoccupies the moment

with an awareness of the unitive life of existence.

Neither zero, nor one, but not two, not two, not two,

neither denying nor affirming, not waxing, not waning,

as if you could feel the pulse of the universe beating

in your own heart, and there is no God, and there is no you

to be known in isolation, except for the fallen plum of a sparrow

in the palm of your hand you absurdly cherish

like the wounded death wish of a lamp that hasn’t gone out

when death is the inspiration that keeps you

perishing deeper into life as if you were staring

a dragon in the eyes on the inside alone together with everyone

as they were when they were a child closer to each other

than they are now. When we trusted the unknown more

than the nothing we can know about it, and innocence

were a perennial state of life like an entrance without

any sign of an exit closing like a barred door behind us

as if there were no need to ever come back this way.

PATRICK WHITE