AFTER THE LONG LABOUR OF ASHES IN THE
RAIN
After the long labour of ashes in the
rain
the phoenix is shrieking like fire into
life again.
I can hear it in the valleys
auditioning the mountains
like a voice torn out of the heart of
pain.
My shadow is in complete empathy with
the ghost
I cast like an imaginative projection
of myself
into the emptiness of my crowded
solitude
where everyone is recognized by the
inside of their faces
in the light of the return journey to
the seasoned innocence
of my homelessness beyond the gates
I’ve passed through
like an earthly garden blooming in the
star fields.
Singing again, as if the stars knew all
the lyrics to the song
long before I opened my mouth to
swallow their fire
without setting myself ablaze like a
funeral pyre
gone supernova in a neighbouring
galaxy.
As if a lighthouse off the dark coast
of the shipwrecks
knew that timing was the medium of the
message
and it was time to rise again on the
updrafts
of these buoyant adagios of
picture-music,
like a heart immersed a long time in
the depths
of its own crazy wisdom abounding
in the bliss of an unknown treasure
rising like a lost continent that
drowned in its sleep.
And even in the weeping for things that
have passed
through the immensity of the solitude I
was the last to leave
like the captain of a lifeboat going
down on the moon,
an undiscovered joy in the way I
learned to breathe underwater
in the ocean of sorrows that
overwhelmed me
like the beauty of a rose that burned
like a torch of blood in the rain.
I’ve given up trying to save the
world like a moral ransom
I pay to the one-eyed pirates of
circumstance
for the redemption of a self that was
more a mirage on the moon
chained like an empty cup to a wishing
well
than real water that flows like the
tears
of diamonds thawing like glaciers from
my eyes.
And may all the wildflowers of this
circuitous blossoming
astound the nostrils of God like a
fragrance of music
growing like white sweet clover along
the roadside.
May every firefly and lightning bolt of
insight
illuminate the whole universe like the
flaring of a single match.
Let the dead whose souls I bear toward
the south
know that I remember their names like
loveletters
I’ve sent on ahead like the return
address of the future
that waits to encounter them again like
birds
that came to the windowsill of this
burning house of life
like the notes of a song from a voice
well beyond
these spinal cords that bind us like
kites to the sky.
I scatter my cremations like ashes on
mirrors of ice
for those who would follow me to ground
like the cornerstones of a tent
pegged to the wind like a flower.
I gnaw on the dice of my bones
like a wolf above the timber line
mining the white gold of a motherlode
of marrow
and I let tomorrow sing of the things
tomorrow brings
like hungry lovers to the round table
of feasting stars.
And bless the sword that guts me like
an envelope
that bleeds like a wound of love that
never scars
the words that are written on a
magnanimous heart
that doesn’t pace the rate at which
it gives itself away
like a poppy dreaming in a field of
leonine dandelions.
And though I fall like an oak on a hill
in a lightning storm
let me not live on my knees dumbstruck
by the revelation
that burns in my heartwood like a
calendar of fire
where somebody’s fixed the dates of
spring
as if they didn’t want to forget how
to be taken by surprise
like a scholar that can’t bring
himself to believe
in the chameleonic nature of his own
eyes.
Though I fall like a waterclock of rain
from the sky
into the deepest blackholes of time,
let no root say
it was ever denied access to my
watershed
that even the dead were the guests of a
living host
that welcomed them like the voices of a
familiar solitude.
Uplifted by spirits of fire, stone, and
water,
I’m flying through stars with my
wings ablaze
like a comet that exalts in jumping for
the sheer joy it
from the black halo that encircles the
beatified sun
like the prophetic zero of the final
outcome.
And I shall not set my circumpolar
throne
on the hills of the skulls of my
traditional enemies
nor abide by the jinx of the birds on a
prayer-wheel
turning in the direction of cosmic
destruction
like an ill wind fouled by the
contagion of time.
Every moment of the day, every era of
the night
I shall remember the infallible
atrocities of blind religion
that gouged the eyes out of the light
like gravediggers
cooking rocks in the shovels of the
backhoes
rummaging through the remains of the
resurrection
for the relics of the names on
vandalized gravestones
weathered by the acidic rain of the
great desecration.
A little bit of joy balancing on a
perilous precipice.
I know about falling. I know the risk.
Not a mandate
nor anything I choose to take as if the
danger were all mine.
But just a little sweetness in life, a
wild grape, the eye of the wine.
A moment stolen from behind the backs
of the calendars
like a man in space, with no time to
reflect on the outcome
of being younger than when he left. Not
listening to signs
but resonating with the hidden
harmonies of myriad symbols
arranging picture music for the eye and
the ear and the tongue
like dew in the night, whole notes and
semi quavers
on the staves of the dreamcatchers and
spiderwebs
when the shining comes to the morning
as unprepared as swallows.
All my Platonic ideals, the black
matter of desire
in a goldrush of the heart that can’t
hold anything back
in a Zen panic to stake its claim on
nothing
as the fairest jewel of all to give
back
to the ocean of awareness you retrieved
it from
and hope the moon among the corals
appreciates the gesture.
Buddha, too, had an ill-advised
attachment to the unnattainable .
I won’t starve my delusions, just to
please my insights.
My mirages drink at the same well I do
without condition
and it’s ok if they want to leave
their veils on too.
And I’ll observe an ethical truce
with society
But more goes on in the dark,
inconceivably,
than even the light could possibly
visualize
on a cold seeing night from a mountain
top
with an asphalt road that coils all the
way around
like a serpent doing research into the
seven ages of man
trying to keep its credibility up with
the times.
On my left palm, the star of Isis,
keeps me from drowning,
and in my left ear, enough gold, if I’m
washed ashore
on some galactic island after another
shipwrecked exemption
to burn me down by the sea on a pyre of
stars this time.
I want to ingather my ghost out of the
smoke, and watch it shine
like fireflies in the fog, like
lighthouses along the coast
off the starboard side, looking for
moonboats
on the slopes of the swells heaving
easily
like bells full of emotion swinging out
over the edge
to prove it’s not afraid of falling
back
to the ground it arose from like a boy
daring the devil to an apple fight
in the crowns of the trees to see who
can climb high enough to scare the
other down.
PATRICK WHITE
