YOUR PICTURE SEEMS VERY COMPOSED

YOUR PICTURE SEEMS VERY COMPOSED

Your picture seems very composed. As if you were trying to believe in yourself. But a rose is a rose is a rose and yours is dark and beautiful as if your heart knocked and the night let it in. I hope one day the dance of love chance and occasion lets me sleep with you like a dragon in advance of the rain. I’ve never slept with an eclipse before but I’ve heard they swallow you whole. If you’ll forgive me for taking this small moment out of my cathedral and choir to be kind to my lust. Someone left it like an orphan on the stairs. I think it’s yours but it keeps calling me by my name like a moth to a candleflame like lightning to a firefly that wants to get higher by deepening the darkness with a glorious death. You brood. You allure. There are bruises on your arm. You’re an amateur celibate. Your broken vows are fortune-cookies that forsake themselves like ostrakons. It must be dangerous being a beautiful woman. A siren on the moon summoning her waves back like shadows she once exiled like the tides of providence she didn’t take. You’re a precipice but you look like an island where the drowned sailors wash up on the shores of your flesh with smiles on their faces. And can you see, even as far off as you are, my little white sail on your event horizon like a feather from the wings of Icarus making his way toward the sun that shines like you at midnight?

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

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