I SAY YOUR NAME TO MYSELF OUT LOUD

I SAY YOUR NAME TO MYSELF OUT LOUD

 

I say your name to myself out loud all these years later

and it tastes like a stranger in my mouth

like a bird caught in a chimney

beating its wings against black tin

like a word caught in the throat of the night

that wants to get out.

To you it looks like freedom.

But to me it’s an exorcism.

When I want to let my ghosts go

I just pick any dandelion in the fall

and blow.

I don’t hang on to them any longer

than fire hangs on to its smoke.

If you take your delusions too seriously

you can turn a legend into a joke.

You smother a baby phoenix in its crib.

And I’m kind of glad

your lies don’t inform me anymore

about how unreliable the truth is

and I suppose it’s some sign of moral progress

when the liars learn to fib

in a halfway house for the truth

they can’t face up to yet

like methadone to cold turkey.

I’ve kept coming back to you

like a sexy soul to a cosmic body

every autumn since you left like a koan

that couldn’t overcome its doubt.

I haven’t seen you in years

except in my mind

but you still don’t believe me

over and over and over again

when I recall how I told you

things would work out.

The dream we wanted to be

wakes up from us

and moves on

like a scar

that thinks of the pain

of who we weren’t to each other

as trivial

compared to who we were.

That’s the trouble with dreams

that lie to themselves

about coming true.

They don’t understand themselves

when they do.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN THE SKY SPEAKS

WHEN THE SKY SPEAKS

 

When the sky speaks

it’s stars sun moon

but when it sings

its voice is full of birds.

This morning I saw

two white tulips

hovering above the grape hyacinth

like angels that could still feel

where the moon left

cool wet kisses on their skin.

And cosmic events

are going on in the grass

that make the galaxies shudder

with unimaginable significance.

The trees have fingerprints

but no one takes them.

And every ant

is a prophet to all the others

as everyone follows everyone else

to the nectar and honey.

I watched them issue

from the tiny caldera

of their sandy volcanoes like lava

trying not to crush them accidentally

and stood in amazement

like a dumbfounded god

as they made the world.

And I asked myself

for all I have written

for all I have painted

what have I ever done in my life

that was comparable to that.

And the crows cawed

and the squirrels chattered angrily

flicking their tails like the horse-tailed hossu

of an old Zen master

trying to keep the flies away.

The point is there’s no point to get.

The period begins the sentence.

And it’s a foolish distinction

that honours its ends

in a world full of beginnings.

Look at the sun.

Look at the moon.

Look at the crazy flowers.

They’re all rank amateurs.

There’s a play.

But no rehearsal.

The stage is new every morning

but no one blows a line.

Everything expresses itself completely

right on time.

Everyone is the grail

of what they’re looking for

like a grapevine looking for wine.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRAY RAIN

GRAY RAIN

 

Gray rain

but the trees

are teaching the stars how to break into leaves.

Good rain on the good earth.

Autumn’s a long passage.

Spring is full of thresholds.

Rainbow bridges in the distance

over urgent streams.

Everything’s in a rush to become something.

I thought I knew once

who I was supposed to be

but more and more it eludes me

like a future that’s already behind me.

I leave it to the world

to finish what I began

and include myself in the mystery

and try to carry on like a man

who looks at a star he won’t follow

through the branches of the burgeoning trees

as the history of who I am

now that I’m not anymore.

The less I am the more there is to be.

And one eye doesn’t get in the way of the other as much.

There is just this as it is

and what am I beholding

if I’m not looking upon myself as I am

in common with everything

that’s changing all around me

like a mind that can’t contain itself

in any fixed mode of being

anymore than the eye

can decide what it’s seeing.

Everything is burning with life in the rain

and change is the dangerous bliss

we feel when we cease to exist.

The trees might have fingerprints

graven into their bark

and you might accord them

an identity in the dark

and approve of their names

and let them pass as if you knew who they were

but that doesn’t make them

any less of a stranger than you are

or the clouds carry passports.

Praise be to the abundance of oblivion

and the cornucopias of blackholes

in the hearts of the galaxies

that keep wounding themselves into life

by falling on their own swords

like a knife that heals.

By day the light gives.

But at night

it steals.

And the mirror lives

and pours water over the eyes of the blind

and suddenly the stars can see again.

And the grape hyacinth is drunk on blue wine.

And I’m walking on water on the moon

even as the moon walks on my tears

without knowing which ones

flowed from the bells of my sorrows

and which overwhelmed me

like birds in the fountains of joy.

First I am a man.

And then I am a boy.

Spring takes itself for granted.

And autumn comes on with regrets.

But they both know

this is as good as it gets

and nothing’s missing

in the mind’s lost and found.

It’s just the way things get around

when you throw the world back in the water

like a life of your own

you gave up years ago

to be who you are now.

Praise be to the stars

that stop by the gate this late

to chat about gardens

and how to keep

the roots of the roses alive

when the ground hardens.

Even if you’re a demon in steep descent

or an angel rising from hell 

life has the power of a flower

and the genius of a universe

to turn falling into a calling

like planets and Canada geese.

You can walk out alone

into a wide open field at night like I do

and stand there under the stars

that have been staring at you since childhood

like someone they should keep an eye on

and say: This is me. This is who I am as I am

to the whole twinkling lot of them in self-defense

to uphold the savage dignity of the difference.

You can stand there in the vastness

of that one definitive thought

that goes on forever like a silence older than birds

and feel the sweet release of upending joy

trying to master its new freedom

when space morphs into a mouth for a moment

and says softly

o so softly

in a voice that’s been singed by compassion:

No.

You’re not.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT COULD I SAY TO MYSELF

WHAT COULD I SAY TO MYSELF

 

In the last moment of a life

that won’t come again

what could I say to myself as an excuse

for dying without having lived?

Isn’t that what makes each life

of inestimable worth?

That it’s only once?

What could I say to myself as an excuse

for living as if I were already the ghost

of someone more vital than me?

If I lived like a morgue

with the sky pulled up over my face

what conjunction of planets and stars

could ever revive me

by rolling their stones

away from my tomb?

How many make their way to the grave

without ever having been born

again and again and again

wave after wave

life after life

far out at sea

in the breathless realms of the mystery

that we are here to wonder

who we are

and might be

and whatever happened

to who we were yesterday.

One leaf experiences

the whole of autumn when it falls.

And you can hold the whole sea

in a single drop of water

on the tip of your tongue

like the flower on a blade of stargrass

or let it run like a tear down your cheek.

And the absence within you

of everything you’re missing

grows bigger the longer you seek.

What could I say to myself as an excuse

if I didn’t live as if my death

were already achieved behind me

like a bridge up ahead in the distance

I’ve already crossed?

As long as anyone sees

a near and a far side to the mindstream

they’re still a shore-hugger in a drunk sailor’s dream.

They’re drowning in dirt.

They’re swimming through stone.

They overturn a lifeboat and call it a home.

They refuse to go along with things like quicksand

trying to take a stand against water.

Their whole life flashes before their eyes

like the first twelve pages of a novel

they never finished

because they didn’t know how to begin

at the end of things.

They didn’t know how to live

like autumn in the spring

and spring in the dead of winter.

They never invited death to their wedding.

So life doesn’t show up at their funerals.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THINGS RECEDE

THINGS RECEDE

 

Things recede back into the silence

like a tide back into itself

that will come forth again

like blood through the back door

of a house no one lives in anymore.

And the ghosts linger like return addresses

with nowhere to go

except where they’ve already been.

And there’s always an elephant in the dark

I can only know in part

by the trunk or the tail

and I know the darkness is trying to help

but it keeps giving me starmaps in braille

I have to burn

to see my way around.

And the wind forsakes my passage like a sail.

And I can hear the squeaky fanbelt

of the pigeon at my window

like a gray angel

in a sudden flurry of wings

but it never leaves a message

that means anything to me.

I keep trying to throw a light on clarity

but clarity doesn’t reveal itself

to the lucid or the blind

and what’s the point of looking

for your mind with your mind?

I shed my leaves on the themes of the present

like a forgiving autumn

and I can’t remember a time

when there wasn’t as much before me

as there was behind

whatever my age was.

How old is space?

And when did the lifelines

on the palms of my hands

move up to my face

like the frayed deltas of long rivers

flowing from the corners of my eyes?

I look at myself in the darkest mirror I can find

and it’s easy to see that it’s my passport

but the face is forged.

It’s the right country

but the wrong civilization.

All the right stars in the wrong constellation.

And death hasn’t convinced me yet

that it’s yoke is a bridge to the other side

and as often as not

I’m as bored to death as Spinoza’s ox

grinding its merciless platitudes

like stone lenses for near-sighted skies

but as far as I can see into the dark

death is nothing but a boorish predictability

and it’s life that always comes as a surprise.

If your roots are in heaven

your trees are walking on their heads

and the egg-cups of their broken crowns

are overthrown like empty shot glasses

after the birds have flown from your branches

like dust before a broom.

You’re sweeping stars off the stairs

when it’s as obvious as clouds

you’re upside-down.

Better to root in the wind like birds

and let your scales turn back into feathers

and realize the eagle with the serpent in its claws

are the god and the dragon of the same gene pool

enjoined by evolving laws

to raise the lowest to the highest

as if you were helping someone

get back on their feet.

And if you’ve got a bone

to pick with existence

over the little bit of red meat you are

like a leftover at a lion’s feast

crack yourself open like a koan

or a fortune-cookie.

The marrow’s sweet

and the lions are fat.

And no one’s going to deny you that.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MY ROOTS TORN OUT OF BLISS

MY ROOTS TORN OUT OF BLISS

 

My roots torn out of bliss

like a weed from Eden

it’s as obvious as enlightenment

that I’m a that and you’re a this

and consciousness is the fiery archangel

that keeps us apart

like two edges of the same sword

that cuts both ways like the moon.

And when I consider the divine irrelevance

of why I’m not very happy these days

of why the sun shines but nothing grows

I’m as abject as midnight

looking for myself in the shadows

like something I threw away.

Born into this world

to make a home among strangers

the doors we leave open behind us

like a book we mean to come back to one day

to see how it all ends

close gently after us

like the eyelids of wounded flowers

that died in the night

as if all the lonely thresholds

we had to cross to get here

we crossed like dust on the wind.

Even when the cathedrals

come down from their towers

like the rubble of their aspirations

and abase themselves to pray

at the foot of their own foundations

the stars turn as deaf

as ostrakons and machine-guns

to the pleading of exiles

trying to turn the night around

like the seeds of Eden in a fallen apple

from a rootless tree

that walks like a human

down a long road of its own

into the unkempt garden of the world.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWO YEARS SINCE YOUR FATHER TOLD ME

TWO YEARS SINCE YOUR FATHER TOLD ME

 

for Patrick Ennis

 

note: Willow is Patrick’s daughter, a two year old girl who has undergone

two heart transplant operations and recently

as a result of the second transplant contracted cancer.

 

Two years since your father told me

you had opened your eyes

and your name was Willow.

Good name. Willow. Wise. A muse.

A fountain and a wellspring

lucid with beautiful sorrows

you bring like secrets of water

from your life before

you were embodied in this one.

Do you remember

washing your hair in the stars

when you lingered by the shore

of your own mindstream

like the Swan in the Milky Way?

Two years since your father told me

you had given birth to him

who called to tell me he was a father

as I listened over the cellphone

to the fireflies and lightning in his voice

trying the fact on like different sizes of light.

Your father is angry and dark

and dresses in black

because he’s got a great heart

that’s radically eclipsed by injustice.

And he’s an original artist

who’s just discovered you

like a new colour

that sheds light upon light

when the sun shines at midnight.

In the vast dark brutally impersonal expanses of space

alone and within

he looks up at the stars

he once shot like heroin

and hangs on to you like a candle

realizing all their blazing

is just another kind of blindness

compared to the light you shed.

And all he had to do

from the very beginning

was see as far as the next human.

And since you lit him up like a star

above a magus with a bass guitar

he’s stopped booking one-night stands

in extra-terrestrial mangers.

He sings punk lullabies to you.

Your mother remains an enigma to me

though I have imagined many times

how she must feel

like the heavy blood-bells

of the poppies

poised midway

between a gypsy wedding

and a Calvinist funeral

when she stands over you

and watches you sleep

not knowing

if you can overcome death

all by yourself

deep in the watershed

of your dangerous beginnings.

Right from the start

you needed a new heart

and praise be to science

for compassionate machines

you got one

and lived like a robot

until they took one

from the life-giving dead

and fit it inside of you like a locket

with someone else’s picture in it.

And later they will give you another

when you’ve grown

and forever your blood

will be a red ribbon on a gift

from someone who sleeps

deep inside you

like a good fairy

dreaming under a stone

that she spreads her wings like dawn

from horizon to horizon

in every breath of you

you take for both

to live on past the morning.

And when you die

you will die in each other’s arms

like two crescents of the same moon

that can’t tell its beginnings from its ends

or who was the stranger

and who was the friend.

I haven’t kept in touch with the Buddha

but I’m going to the place

you’re coming from

as we pass each other like bridges

looking for the other side of things

as if there weren’t much of a difference.

Life isn’t our first innocence

and death won’t be our last.

And two years on earth

isn’t time enough to adumbrate

the original wisdom that belongs to all of us

however we lose our minds in the way of the world

looking for what can no more be lost

than light can be lost in space.

We may be many blossoms on your tree Willow

but we all wear the same face

and we all feel the same way

just as music can’t tell the difference

between the joy it shares with agony

or a requiem for the dead

that celebrates the living

from an epithalamion to the sun

that carries its orchard across the threshold

like cosmic seeds in tiny coffins

as if life were the only secret

death couldn’t keep to itself.

And stronger than the tree.

The seed.

That’s why you’ve made it through more

than most strong men could endure.

Every heartbeat has been a throw of the dice

that would terrify Caesar like a Rubicon

too wide to cross

but I can see the chalk on the sidewalk

and it isn’t the outline of a corpse

in a murdered mirror

but you playing hopscotch

with daisies on your socks

as you bend down on one wobbly leg

to pick up the new heart you threw ahead of you

before you jump to the next

like the square of the number one.

Old pond.

Frog jumps in.

Splash.

Basho wrote that.

And when he buried his seven year old son:

You may have been a dewdrop

in this dewdrop of a world

but even so even so . . . .

And you will come to understand in time

like water in autumn

the thousands of beautiful ways

we have learned to cry here on earth

like lonely birdsong

for things we know nothing about.

The bitter apple of knowledge

ripens into poetry

like an old man

at his daughter’s wedding.

And the serpent looks on with a grin.

But you’re too young to have learned

how to fear your own freedom yet

like a bad bet against circumstances

no one controls.

The trolls haven’t gathered under your bridge

like hydro-bills

to exact the tolls

they demand of your parents

like parking lot fees at the hospital

when they go to see

after each surgery

if God slipped a loveletter

under their door this time

or an eviction notice

that kicks the house of life out of them.

Your father works hard

and your mother is Bethlehem.

And Herod’s doing a body count

of all the future assassins he’s overthrown

like the first born of the aboreal cribs

that give birth to birds and babies

and shamans in the treetops.

And when the wind blows

down will come baby

cradle and all

but you’ve already fallen from the tree

more than once

and featherlesss

managed somehow

to crawl back up into the nest

of a determined heart

that insists on growing wings.

Fly, Willow, Fly.

Let your hair down in the wind

that runs its fingers through it like music

that catches God’s attention quicker than prayer

and makes a more lasting impression.

And even though your father tells me now

the last heart they gave you

has bruised your blood with cancer

and you must fight for your life again

live, Willow, live

to count the rings around your heartwood

like the number of times

you were engaged to spring

before you eloped with the summer

like pale-faced blossoms on their way to Mexico.

Live among the things of the world

you can touch and see

and hear and taste and smell

and cast strange thoughts over

like a spell of fireflies in a wishing well

where the sad magicians dwell

who don’t believe

in the power of their magic

to transform the toad of the world

back into a prince who isn’t bitter

or pull waterlilies like doves

out of the sleeve of a swamp.

You’re the dark queen of dynastic dragons.

You Willow

with your little life

just as it is now

like the small breath

the tiny flame

of a dragon queen

keeping death at bay somehow

like a cosmic fire death can’t blow out.

How strong you must be

to have suffered so much

against the odds

of a body loaded in death’s favour

and what a prodigy of bravery

you must have been in another life

lingering in the shadows of this one  

that even your parents

have learned courage from you.

And already you are more powerful

than any of us

without even trying.

You learn without learning

and wiser than those

who think of learning

as a kind of repentence

for their ignorance

imposed upon themselves

like the fear of really knowing

they call the beginning of wisdom

even at two

you’re the clear eye of the storm

that offers the battered birds

sanctuary and composure.

And you’re the dangerous peace

that your parents

are trying to make with the world

that threatens what they love the most.

So fight, Willow, fight

to keep the light alive in the lamp.

Don’t let the night steal the moon from your window.

Live to know how much space

there is in a human heart

for sorrow and happiness

and how we light our hearth-fires

over the bones of our dead

who rise whole and unbroken as bread

to sustain us in their absence.

Live to know how forgiving the rain is

and how trusting the flowers

and how everything here

has learned to live

like a replay of their passing away

as the only means they have of staying.

Bloom among us Child

like a message in a bottle from God

that he’s still waiting to be rescued

rise up from the depths of your abyss

like the leviathan of a volcanic island

and let the birds bring you seeds

and the tides

wild coconuts.

Learn monkey and tree and star and stone

and how to tell time

by the Big Dipper and the Canada geese

and their return

and the number of times

the undetectable cricket in the grass

fiddles with his legs like the hands of a clock

who’s learned to play the violin badly

and how the further you look out into space

from some isolated farmer’s field

on a night in the autumn

the less you feel alone

as you turn toward home.

Love, Willow, love

like a feather loves the wind

like the sea loves its weather

like a star loves the darkness it’s shining in

like a dream loves the bed of flesh it’s lying in

like the blood loves the heart

like a station on its way

and the mind loves the grape and the vine

it perceives in the eye of the wine

before the arising of signs

has anything to say about why.

Be sky, Willow, and moon,

be water and mountains

that weep like young streams

peaking  on stars like clouds at night

that sweeten their sorrows in the valleys

like pregnant bells of light

planting orchards

planning weddings.

Draw your knees up under you chin

as you did when you were an embryo

and sit on the stone of the world

like a habitable planet of your own

that’s less coffin than cocoon

and lost like a child

in the lucidity of wonder

share with the dragonflies and frogs

those long silent thoughts that go on forever

like sunsets and radio waves

about what we’re all doing here together

as if all we’ve ever had to belong to

were each other

as we all belong to you somehow

and that’s more than enough of an answer for now.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PATRICK WHITE