AND SHOULD IT COME TIME TO SPEAK OF THE
SADNESS
And should it come time to speak of the
sadness
that reaches fruition in the medicine
bag of the heart,
don’t bring a teacher that can’t
heal by singing and dancing
to the wounded discipline of a lost art
that’s gone
into the sacred solitude of the secret
suffering
that upholds the integrity of the
silence in your eyes.
This is a seeing that has nothing to do
with truth or lies
or the innovative causality of pain.
Don’t speak
of its release as enlightenment or
liberation,
as if you were uncaging doves from the
ashes of your voice.
Don’t seek what has eluded you when
you’re cloaked
in an eyeless night like the screening
myth of a lonely alibi.
And should it come time to speak of the
sadness
don’t humble the message at the
expense of the medium you choose
to weep in when the hidden urges you
into the open
like a dragonfly emerging from the
hovel of a chrysalis
into a palace of air with the wingspan
of your diaphanous windows
beaded in tears like the afterbirth of
the rain
in the post-natal mirrors of your
indefinable awareness of life
as the sweetest agony of sorrow
transformed into bliss
you ever had to endure like the darkest
night
of a sea change in the unforeseeable
nature
of your inconceivable soul trying to
emulate
the unknown likeness you shapeshift to
accommodate
the arrival and departure of everything
you’ve ever had to let go of
like summer stars, and waterbirds, and
legendary ordeals of love
when the full moon so often filled the
empty silos of your longing
with the unsuccessful harvests of
hungry ghosts
that competed with the sparrows and the
scarecrows
for the seeds of a garden the wind
neglected to sow.
And should it come time to speak of the
sadness
that saturates all human affairs in an
aura of mourning
that hangs in the air like a mingling
of swords and bells,
don’t pretend your life was a nuclear
winter of unrelieved misery
when everyone knows if it weren’t for
trying to cling to joy
or even the longing for it, you might
have smiled your way
through everything like the cold stone
of the moon.
Remember those thoughts that used to
come
like snakeoil salesmen that greased
their sinusoidal way
into your heart like coiled serpent
fire that mesmerized you
like the blue bird of happiness on your
own projections
until the promise wore thin, and all
your ploys at joy
turned out to be nothing but the
hucksterism of tapeworms?
And, then, as it sometimes happened
more often in autumn
than spring, your heart soared like a
guitar with a broken string
taking wing like a waterbird off your
tears
until you burned out like a comet with
an uplifting message
in a niche that was meant for candles
with slower wicks?
That kept you hanging onto life like a
burning box kite didn’t it?
And should it come time to speak of the
sadness
like a sin of omission that overpowers
us all eventually
because the best things we promised
ourselves
were never unattainable and the joy we
sought and fought
and laboured for, and did not find, was
barely explainable
even to us who became experts in
grinding mirages into lenses
to reveal where it might be hiding
somewhere in the universe
right under our noses. Up close and as
intimate as our eyes.
PATRICK WHITE
