O THIS MORNING MORE THAN EVER

O THIS MORNING MORE THAN EVER

 

O this morning more than ever

I want to disappear into my life

like a bird into the blue oblivion

of a migration of one

that’s never coming back.

Things aren’t solid.

They’re real.

And tonight I will appeal again

to the subtle intelligence of the dark matter

that resonates throughout space

like energy musing upon itself at rest

after long labour

to let me evaporate with the stars

like a breath somebody took

deeply into themselves

and then breathed out.

Did my eyes sweeten the windows

they looked through like women?

Did my looking help ripen the stars?

Strange wounds.

Stranger scars.

There’s no end

to the myriad afterlives of water

that a human lives through

like the weather

of an undiscovered sea

and time just keeps

carrying things forth into the carrying forth

like a clepshydra of severed heads

bleeding like buckets

one into another.

An alphabet of prophetic skulls

that never finish a sentence

because the things we say

already have more in common

with the dead

than they do with the living

from the very first word

that falls from our mouths like an apple.

If I have spoken in tongues and symbols

and mixed occult elixirs

like secret constellations

to heal the injured night

my voice never forgot

that it was a mere gesture of moonlight,

a mystic adagio of picture-music

dancing alone in its own shadows.

And if I went crazy in the pursuit

of an earthly excellence

it was just to pass the time.

Anyone with a spirit needs a cosmic hobby.

Anyone with a mind

needs to let go now and then

like a universe that expresses itself completely

and then stands a human up

like a finger to the lips of a prolonged silence.

And what can you say

to those with a heart

that wait for blood to return

like the wind to their sails

with good news

like oxygen from Atlantis

that things are beginning to look up

except drink up

until you’re sober as dry land again.

The ecliptic intersects the celestial equator

at the equinoctial colure

and it’s spring again

in the northern hemisphere

where the crocuses

are poking their noses

through holes in the snow

like bruises beginning to bloom.

If there is no wonder in your love

you will never know

the profound delight

of being grateful for your life

and the stars won’t humble you

when you ask the night who you are

into knowing what they do.

Stop listening to everything with your mouth

and sit down beside the fountain

like a road or a sundial

that’s found its way back

and hear what your ears

have been saying for years

about the coin you lost in the mindstream

like your passage across the river of death

coming up like the moon

over your left shoulder

to take your breath away.

Wisdom renounces the wise

and therein lies enlightenment.

Ignorance embraces the fools of the spirit

and there are no words for it.

The best is clarity.

Clarity is all.

This is a doorway.

This is a wall.

And this is all the gold of India

I would give if I could

to sit down with Hafiz

by the banks of the Ruknabad

among all those Persian roses

and steal musical riffs from the stream

to say what we impossibly mean

to the young slave girl

with the mole on her cheek

who’s learning to speak our language like a muse.

If I have longed for things all my life

as if they were out of reach

it was one of the dark jewels of my childhood

the died like an eye for a lack of light

that taught me

longing is more creative

than fulfillment

and the nightbird

on its broken branch alone

sings like a wine closer to home

than all the daylight choirs

of happier wings in the vineyard

that inspires the liars into blossoming

like loveletters on the wind

they don’t know where to send.

So I tell them without believing

they know what I’m talking about

to take a page out of the orchard’s book like I do

and when spring’s in the air

send them everywhere.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VASTER

VASTER

 

for you whose name means night

 

Vaster than this lost immensity

I revel in alone

a space opens up inside of me

like a nightsky

with stars I cannot name.

The silence gapes at their radiance

and strange chameleonic flowers gather

like moths to a flame.

The grass is kind.

The leaves are tender.

And the moon is always new.

I can feel lyrical tendrils of longing

reaching out for you in the darkness

like water and wine

in paisley designs

and your fingerprints

are all over the grapes

as if you wanted someone to know

who’s crying in the window.

The night is urgent

with small animals

changing species.

I can feel their eyes

beading on the bushes

as they look out in wonder

at what I might be

as I do you

enraptured with becoming.

You turned the world upside down

like a shotglass at a bar

just for a change of stars.

Now you’re down under.

And I’m slowly getting drunk on your absence

like a dark wine that matured

like a calendar of eclipses

into a choir that knows

all the songs of summer

that could make a grown man cry

for things he wonders

if he’ll ever know again.

So little love.

So much pain.

I’ve become good friends

with the crystal dolmen you left me

like a buddha in the Arctic

trying to thaw the moonlight a little

like an unexpected intensity

in the middle of things.

A little brass statue of Kali

dances beside him

and next to that

the small hand-carved sign

that follows me around like a branch

trying to be a perch for a bird

that’s run out of trees:

Poet’s Landing.

Wherever that is.

And maybe maybe maybe baby one night

you’ll let me see the stars through your window

and I can tell you all their names in Arabic

and what they mean in the ascendant

when I look beyond your eyes

like a drowning man

to read the lifelines in the light

you keep throwing out to me

like gentle nets of water

you bead in your moonboat 

as you’re sailing through Aquarius

mobbed by flying fish

who can’t thank you enough for their wings.

I’m a freedom fighter

for a dreamcatcher

that wants to come true.

I’m a pilgrim

on the last hill before home

back from a holy war of one.

And I look at you in the distance

like a promise I made

to the sun at midnight

and I see what I’ve come back to

like a witching wand to water

is you in every sign of life

that wakes in the valley of the mindstream.

And I think of who you were

before you left

and who you might be

when you come back

and I dream things about you

that please me with the easy way

your veils fall from the seeming

and I’m left

beaming alone like a lighthouse

on a rough coast in a Pacific storm

as if I were high on fireflies

and there were no warning

in the red morning 

in which I have no say

like stars lost in the sun

when I see you this way.

 

PATRICK WHITE 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'VE STOPPED MISTAKING MY LIFE

I’VE STOPPED MISTAKING MY LIFE

 

I’ve stopped mistaking my life

for evidence I exist.

I’ve stopped watering

palm-trees in a mirage.

I’m leaking out of myself

like sand through a crack

in a wounded hourglass.

I’ve stopped doing my time

standing up

and approach things more

like a circle

that’s been squared

by a reclusive hypoteneuse.

I’ve stopped asking

how many legs are on a snake

or what does it mean

when things don’t mean anything.

For all the auditions I held

I never did find a stand-in

for the meaning of meaning.

I can hear crutches breaking

like dead branches

from the tree of knowledge

that rails like an ice-storm in hell

there’s no light for its chandeliers.

How many voices are in a secret?

How many theories in a thought?

How many lovers had to die

to keep one feeling alive?

I deserted the circus of high ideals.

I unfeathered my heels

and stopped trying to invent

new alphabets that would read like birds

before the first snow.

When you’re everywhere

there’s nowhere left to go.

I stopped telling time to its face

what hour it was and wasn’t

and started listening to it

as if it had nothing to say.

I stopped asking space for i.d.

and it stopped showing me

an old picture of me

with one eye.

A voice spoke

out of the purposeless undoing of the fire

and everything went up like smoke

trying to get a little higher.

I wasn’t on a mission

to save the souls of the trees

like native peoples

by converting them

to doors and ladders.

I swept through steeples

like a forest-fire

And the judgment came down:

Nothing matters.

And I knew I was free

to take liberties with the abyss.

And everywhere I rode

a flying carpet of karma

through the infinite darkness

unspooling like a wavelength of light

I made up my own myths

about the stars that were passing

clandestine lovenotes through my eyes

as if they were doves

sent out to look for me like land.

But I had a hell of a flood

of my own going on

and took wing for Atlantis.

I’ve given up trying to walk on water

but I can go for miles on quicksand.

Stars are another matter.

A firewalk you take alone.

I live in a house

where the windows

are lightyears across

and a black hole

is my last known address

surrounded by trees

that keep opening my mail

like leaves of their own

to see who signed

what the light confessed

when it wanted to get

the night off its chest.

Tell me your sorrows.

Tell me your fears.

Tell me your hopes and passions

and I’ll listen like a universe

to its own afterbirth

like a flawed soul

listens with compassion to the rain.

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

perhaps

detailed maps

of rivers that never flowed.

But I take a deep breath

and put my shoulder to the wind like a bell

that’s taken on a heavy load

like a backhoe in heaven

excavating graves

to see if anything

can truly save us from ourselves.

I come up like the full moon

of a mushroom in the night

and I wait for elves

to enthrone me like a footstool

under everybody’s feet

as the last of the hanging judges

takes his seat.

But I know like a man

who wrestles with angels

how to grow stronger with every defeat.

I am no longer defined by things

that don’t know the limits

of what I’m becoming

now that I’ve dropped off my body and mind

like a demon jumping from paradise

without a parachute.

And this is the anti-papal decretal

of the fallible man

they stone with churches on earth

for showing up blessed like a human

who took the shape of the world

from the inside out

not the outside in.

This way lies redemption.

That way, too.

Fire’s not a heresy

that’s committed to its flames

anymore than autumn consumes

the heartwood of its orthodoxies

when it burns the trees.

Desire doesn’t cut the tongue

out of the mouth of love

for saying the secret name of God

as if it weren’t junkmail

on the threshold

of the old neighbourhood

the cornerstones of sounder reasons

had torn down like a slum

to make room

for better things to come.

There are still scarlet geraniums

blooming in red brick clay pots

on the windowsills of longing

that haven’t lost their faith

like leaves yet

one day they’ll return to the garden.

And baby boys born

like heartsongs with hards on

that are not the cliches

of impish cherubs

in a painting of original sin

but angels holding burning swords

at the gates of the mothers

they’ve been driven out of

to guard the way in.

It’s deeply ontological.

But if things didn’t happen this way

how could you ever find

your own way back

to that shortcut you took

like time off at the beginning?

And haven’t you noticed yet

how the universe keeps showing up

a star too late for the end of things

making up excuses along the way

like a touring playhouse on wheels

rehearsing what to say

for the long delay

in catching up to itself like a thief?

You can tell a lot about a man

by what he steals.

You can tell a lot about a world

by the way your life feels

when there’s no one around

to make a sound

as you fall like a tree in the forest.

How many koans need to be cracked

like skulls full of insight

before you get the gist of the joke

that everything you see

is whole and perfect and broke.

Hell and heaven

are only the first two stairs

on this fire-escape

the stars have lowered to earth.

And then there’s a bridge to the other side

of a river that’s given up looking

for its lost shores

to put an end to its weeping.

And I don’t know who she is yet

but beyond that

there’s a woman on her knees

crying like one of life’s immensities              

for her dead baby

as she washes its blood off the floors

with her hair

for safe-keeping.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VAIN IDIOTLOGS

VAIN IDIOTLOGS

 

Vain idiotlogs in squirmy smiles

and miles of opinionated ties.

Pudgy party toads squatting

on lilypad platforms rooted in the muck.

Hypocrites.

Liars.

Gluttons.

And the viciously ignorant.

Voces populi.

The voices of the people

embodied in corrupt men

like birds in a fireplace chimney.

The voices of the people

unspooling eclipses of lies

that smother their words in oil

like the Exxon Valdez.

Juvenile geriatric ferocities

that have run out of patience

with the protocols of decency.

Look at their faces.

Cantankerous old men

looking for a use for themselves in life

like barbed wire and bleach.

Arsonists in a volunteer fire-brigade

throwing matches out the window

of an obsolete Martin Mars waterbomber

to give themselves something to put out

like Empedocles on Aetna.

For years I’ve listened

to these fascist clowns

being interviewed like tumours on tv

to see if they’re benign or malignant.

They pour themselves out

like Niagaras of iodine

into every wounded issue

that falls down and scrapes its knees.

Their cures are contemporaneously racist

but long ago they liberated the disease

like the ceo’s of global companies

calling for free market economies

to tear down their natural immunities

to a parasite that claims it eats symbiotically.

Leaders of men.

Leaders of women and children.

Leaders of the mute and helpless.

North stars of the unchosen people

for whom no seas part to let them pass.

Blinded by their own blazing

they shine like the stars of a new constellation

bent on cleaning up the slums of the zodiac

but they’re still the same old spiders in the cosmic web

spinning the dark matter of the masses

out of their bulbous asses.

Hatred grows as reasonable as a snake

in a nest of baby crows.

And the emperor is dressed

in common clothes

like a rose

slumming among the weeds

crowding the perimeters of the garden

they’re never allowed in

like another heartworm up for re-election.

Like any infection when it takes a stand

they claim the doctor

can’t cure the disease

unless he has it

and in the name of spreading the word

they never wash their hands.

Rabies running a primary against water.

Hydrophobic oases in desert sands

where every revelation’s the mirage

of an experienced snakepit

that fell like manna from heaven

misleading the caravan

along the Perfume Trail to the Promised Land

like the Platonic ideal of a democratic newsreel

with a real feel for Egypt.

The text might be archetypically abstract

but the footnotes

are written in the blood of people

who never learned how to read

and however you spin the writing on the wall

it’s the graffitti under the spray-bombed bridge

that reveals their tragically anonymous fates

not the monograms on the dinner plates

that are laid out like harvest moons

for the tapeworms of state

who celebrate themselves

like infinite boons in banquet rooms for all of us.

They also serve who only stand and wait

but it’s getting late

and everyone wants to go home

like a desparate nation

to a refugee camp in foreclosure

where the landlords of life

with a marketshare in evolution

read Adam Smith

and practise infantile exposure.

One self-serving maggot of a man

when he hatches out of his own filth

can lay enough legislative eggs

on the forehead of its electoral host

the eyes of innocent children

can’t see the stars

through the flies that swarm them

as if Beelzebub had become a creator

and genesis read like genocide.

And it doesn’t matter

how hard it snows

on the political domes

of our subservient masters

to purify the outcome of the issue

the heat of the dungheaps underneath

burns their Arctic ice-cap down

everytime they let out a breath

like a gas of global warming.

Choirs of sirens have learned to sing

like lighthouses without a warning

along the dangerous coasts

of another red-eyed morning.

The foghorns call us to the rocks

like the pterodactylic dying call

of the last species of dinosaur

stoned out of existence

by the mobs of those without sin. 

Rats gnaw the flute of the Pied Piper

who lost his way out of Hamlin

and turned around like the Black Plague.

Gulliver’s bound in a straitjacket of Lilliputions.

And government’s the cult leader

of the analectic Confucians

who keep exact records

of the murders next door

like the ancestral bloodlines

of praeturnatural planets

hooked on bad astrologers.

The fixed stars roll like loaded dice

across the darkling glass

and one-eyed Cylopean skies

of our glacial cataracts

as if everything in existence

had a secret agenda

it’s clinging to like a stolen identity

waiting to show its face

like a rattlesnake under a rosebush

that talks in tongues to a spirit of thorns.

No matter how many eagles they eat

they’ll never learn to fly

and when they look to the sky

to point themselves out

like a constellation

brighter than the rest

the stars quickly get their nebulars together

and shine like false magi

on the afterbirth

of all these maggots with horns

trying to put a new spin

on the corpse of a dead myth

that reeks like a hieroglyph

just leaked to the press

about how we got into this mess.

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU'RE LIKE THIS WANDERING DAWN

YOU’RE LIKE THIS WANDERING DAWN

 

for Layla on her way

 

You’re like this wandering dawn

thirty-five thousand feet above the Pacific

and I’m like this horizon

back here on the ground

at my desk in Perth

wondering if all that splendour

might ever stand in my doorway again.

I don’t think yesterday ever stops

or there’s ever an end of beginning

because everything includes everything

from the very start

like water coming down a mountain on the moon

whole in every part of its flowing

in the expanding here and now of its knowing

the entire sea of awareness

that fills all the cups of time

is contained in every drop

that spills over the brim of a human heart

that knows the journey is the whole of its destination.

We are most homeless on our own thresholds

just as we are crossing them

to go out into the night

like fireflies among the fixed stars.

And most vulnerable

when we take off space like skin

to show someone we love

there is no outside or in

no end or origin

no departure arrival or road

in the way we begin each other

like worlds we could live in

like birds in flight through the night.

And you could bring your own stars.

And I could be as wise as the seasons

and discover the whole earth

is the philosopher’s stone

and throw it through the mind-mirror

that makes love look for alibis and reasons

like small cracks around its eyes.

And birds would be the first words

of a sky that’s learning to talk.

And later you could teach it

to play the stars

as if the universe took the shape

of a beautifully made guitar

in the hands of a wistful siren

whose longing is the music of her solitude.

And I would come to you

like the afterlife of a tree you once loved

and whisper things to you

even the wind doesn’t know

when it opens its ears like leaves.

We could steal the moon

from each other’s window

like lovers and thieves

and get away with it all like joy

because no one believed we could. 

You could be the sacred groves.

I could be the rebel wood.

You could wear the night for clothes

And I could stand there in my strangerhood

and let the flames fall from my body

like feathers from a phoenix

and burn so hot

you could see right through me.

Space is faster than light or thought

and space is the dark mother

that opens the gates to everything

in between the lines of an unsigned loveletter

that writes itself as you read.

I am the way I am

because you are the way you are

said the darkness to the star

the flower to the bee

the mountain to the sea.

You could be a mystic river

and I could be your reed.

You could be a fire-giver

and I could be your candle.

You could be a grail of rain

and I could be the search.

You could be a rose of pain

and I could be your church.

You could cry like a late-night violin

and I could be your Handel.

And that’s the way the world emerges

out of the emptiness of a boundless abyss

and love calls out like one voice with myriad echoes

you could be the furious dream

of the butterfly princess

who dreamed she woke up to a kiss

and thousands of miles away

here at my desk

I could be the bliss

of watching you rise in the morning.

You could be a comet

passing through the sunset.

And I could be the vapour trail

of your new-age prophet

and explain you like a message to the rest

any sign of your light

is proof to the fruitful

there are still cosmic eggs

that break like worlds

waiting to be born

that fly from a shaman’s nest

high among the stars

and a full moon in the apple-tree

whose passage is blessed

by a lone Druid

in a cathedral forest

struck by lightning

back here in Canada

counting tree-rings

like so many scars till spring.

 

PATRICK WHITE