THESE
MIGRANT VISITATIONS
for
Alysia
These
migrant visitations of who I am
because
I love you,
my
unceasing creatrix,
my
sole definition,
here
in the fluctuant shadow-water
of
the morning trees
where
I remember your voice
in
the words of your letter
like
stars from the night before.
Out
of nowhere you appear
and
apply the moon
like
a cool poultice to the heart
and
things heal that were wounded
and
in the vastness where I cannot find myself
I
find you the rarest issue of the light
to
ever restore me like a lost sky to its eyes
and
for a few moments
I
am home again among my own stars
and
the world is as supple and clear and beautiful
as
I have ever hoped it would be
because
you are the voice in the shining
that
I listen to visually
and
everything I hear is light,
and
everything I see
the
blood-theme of a mystic insight
a
muse beyond what any poet
could
ever possibly mean.
Still,
there’s joy in the words
and
a tenderness that falls like a drop of wine
from
the tine of the thorn
that
releases the delirium of the rose
like
music from a horn.
So
I say it and mean it and be it and feel it
until
the impersonal intimacy
of
all those nights I was turned in a light
that
could not look through me
flow
away like starless diamonds in tears.
And
it’s raining now on another morning
and
since I last wrote this
a
million things have mingled in the singing
as
if all the drunks in the world
were
suddenly one grape
held
under the tongue of a single leaf
waiting
to extoll the price of their night passage.
The
birds glean the metal fields
of
the radiators of the cars in the parking lot
for
dragonflies
and
I am astonished
at
the alacrity of the adaptation
and
the nascent symbiosis of sparrow and machine.
What
distinction between a Ford and a hippopotamus?
And
last night I used the moon
to
erase the old outlines of the constellations
that
had posted their stars like border-guards
and
the immigrants came pouring through like Canada geese
and
the next thing I know
I’m
returning to you
down
the fleet slopes of the world mountain
like
water to the river it was taken from like eyes.
And
I snuffed all the tongues of the serpents and candles
and
let them flow away
into
the darkness and silence
of
their own concerns in the shadows
and
I overturned all my thrones
like
books with slipped discs
I
don’t mean to come back to,
and
took my own breath as a guide
and
followed it out into the night
where
you abide among the mountains.
And
there are as many meanings
as
there are leaves
but
they’re not the fruit and the flower
and
the line in the dirt I drew to configure a self
and
dared no one to cross
the
whole world transits with every step I take
and
my one letter alphabet
has
disintegrated into fireflies and birds
and
there is so much more now I can’t say
than
I couldn’t before
that
not even existence
could
do the talking for me
so
I come to a station of the silence
where
there’s no need to say
no
way to say
how
you shape and move me like space.
And
I get up again this morning
not
knowing who I might be now
and
return like the moon to the well of this poem
to
shed my face like a petal
that
I might see you in the enhancing clarity
of
having gone, gone, gone, wholly beyond
the
beginning of everything before it happens.
And
I don’t know why there’s a rose now
but
there’s a black rose in the dark mirror
whose
every eyelid is an eclipse
more
revealing than the light
as
I crawl out of the blood-tides of the night,
a
new species adapting to the original medium
of
its own inconceivability
and
in this realm
if
there were an attribute to be had
it
would be you.
Night
again
and
the window is full of the world
and
there’s an eloquence before words
when
the mouthless void speaks without a language
and
every period runs like a raindrop down into these sentences
trying
to get to the roots of things
like
a man weeping in a dream
as
he weeds shadows on the moon
to
clarify a flower in a desert that never blooms.
Or
should I be looking for a spiritual vaccine
to
inoculate myself against the light
by
shooting stars?
I
didn’t know how dark it was
until
somebody lit a match
and
I wasn’t lost until someone crossed a threshold,
nor
evil, until the ladders made rungs of the snakes.
When
I look into my own eyes
it’s
like looking into a river
that
keeps its secrets to itself
and
things are neither unique nor non-existent
and
if the world before me isn’t intentional
then
I remember it’s not unintentional either
and
ultimately I’m the chainmaster
that
binds and unbinds my breath to being.
And
maybe I’ve grown wise enough not to mean anything,
and
self-reliant enough not to be anything
and
clear enough not to see anything
in
the theme of the mind mirror
that
does and doesn’t look like me
and
the things of the world
are
a grammar of signs
that
decipher us to ourselves like shadows
that
gape like mouths without a voice
as
we weigh the feather of our wills
against
the mountain of our choice
on
the pivot of every breath
and
still can’t tell the difference
between
a short and a long death;
and
maybe it’s nothing like that at all,
maybe
nothing but a madman looking down a well
into
his own eyes
and
what he sees is
all
his constellations gusting into fireflies,
everything
coming undone
like
well-meaning lies
told
by the partially wise
to
the partially dumb
to
cope with the delusion of a sublime error
by
opening the dark gates of a new greed to everyone,
and
maybe, maybe, maybe, the pulse of a ghost
is
enough to go on beyond
the
broken wishbone witchsticks
of
our conceptual divining for water in hell,
and
I am loyally abusive enough to manage it,
but
there’s something about you, Alysia,
that
streams through the context
of
my own inconceivability like stars
and
alerts me to an earthly sweetness in the dark
and
returns the autumn mystic
grazing
in the pastures of the western sun
to
his sourceless source
like
a white horse to the moon.
However
deep and indelible, the eclipse,
however
blinded by its own blazing, the insight,
or
whenever I’m on the verge of perfecting my extinction
or
rendering my solitude delusionally inviolable,
or
trying to comfort my ghost like an echo
in
the mass graves of the valley of dead bells
by
exorcising myself from the cosmic mountain that shed them
like
water off a dog’s back,
you
have always found me without seeking
like
the last thread on the loom that changes everything.
Blood.
A pebble. Splash. A rose.
Or
the light goes out and I can see again
and
my eyes know the radiance of the dark jewel
they’re
swimming through like fish is yours.
Things
are the mental forms the senses wake
like
waves and sails and islands
in
a sea of turbulent awareness
to
locate the mind in space
and
make events out of their random collusion
that
might be embedded in flesh and time and delusion like laws.
Everything’s
arrayed in conceptual skin
by
our own subjective projections
like
the pages of a round book
and
conciousness slices the onion thinner
than
the gateless gate between inside and outside
and
we take up arms against our own reflection in everything
and
bug our own mouths with listening devices for signs
until
every tremor of a blade of grass or grain of sand
is
the indecipherable code of a mystic urgency
and
we forget whose eyes are looking back at us like trees.
And
sometimes I think conciousness
is
the light on the helmet of a miner in the dark
labouring
to silver its own suicide by exhuming the moon
from
the mountain it’s buried under
but
it’s hard to know whether awareness is a gift or a sacrifice
and
the distinction is always a conception of the inconceivable
beyond
me
and
grateful for my ignorance
I
return to the festive parity of my themeless being
at
ease in the wonder of everything
as
if I laid the world like my head in your lap.
And
it seems at times that life lives us
like
unrehearsable parts in a play
we
cannot know the lines of
until
they’ve been experienced
as
what we most intimately mistake ourselves for
on
stage and off.
But
there’s a clarity
behind
the curtain, behind the lights
neither
intimate nor impersonal,
not
witness, nor actor, nor understudy,
past,
present and future,
the
three personae of time,
not
a mystery, not a fact, nor a paradigm,
nor
the enlightened pop
of
the moon like a waterlily on a bubble of wine
washing
off her makeup on her sleeves.
I
don’t know what it is
though
it infuses me with awe and gratitude
for
the unintentionality of its life
and
the darkest of nightmirrors for the deepest assurance
that
I am not anything but that
that
engenders this
that
seeking loses
and
silence interdicts
the
moment it speaks.
And,
of course, the human body
is
a bag of water with nine holes in it
that
leaks and reeks like a waterlily in its own tumesence,
and
its ruin, like the rose, daunts the unborn
into
sipping unbeing from the uncreate,
as
if existence were a fraud
or
God threw the world like bad meat
down
her own well one night
and
ever since nothing’s ever been quite right,
but
we’re the spontaneous issue of a void
that
doesn’t claim parenthood
and
every word we say is the name of our dark mother
and
everything we see is the light in her eyes
when
she invokes us like the dew
out
of her abundance
like
a moment, a wavelength, a thought
and
covers our nakedness in stars and oceans
in
mind and world and flesh
and
let’s us wander freely
in
the arraying of our emptiness.
All
these things, forms, images
that
come pouring out of the plenum-void,
that
occur like a face
in
the space of an immeasurable mirror
without
testimony or witness
that
nevertheless promotes the illusion
of
I and you, and it, and they and we and him
and
gives to everything
an
identity and name and distinguishing characteristic
that
let’s us touch and think and talk to one another,
what
are they if not
the
whole of creation playing by itself
and
making us up like a life or a song as it goes along?
Until
you let it live you like a child
wholly
absorbed in delight
in
luminous exaltation
with
her own creation,
the
myriad inflections of a jewel
dancing
like supple fire on her own waters,
and
the same sea of her own formless awareness
on
every tongue of every wave of insight
that
bows before her island throne
with
news of another wonder,
you
cannot know what life is,
you
cannot know who you are and are not,
or
how the sameness is not forsaken by the difference,
or
the flight of its light
does
not drown the star in sorrows
and
wash it like a cinder
from
the eye of its shining,
or
the road you make with your own walking
is
innocent of arrivals and departures
and
is the same language spoken by everyone
before
a word gets said.
Nor
can you know these others
who
people you along the way
like
worlds within worlds
until
you tweak the secret
of
the dark clown who scowls
like
an approaching storm over the mesmeric view
you
keep hoping your life is,
and
giving everything up
like
dust and stars and leaves
and
shadows on the stairs to the broom
that
sweeps you through the gate
beyond
thresholds
like
a breath on a cold night
unlace
your beginnings in the womb
like
a gift you haven’t opened yet
and
astounded by the generosity
of
your original emptiness
let
it live you like a prayer
that
is constantly coming true,
until
this is done like the morning
you
cannot be wholly and truly you,
you
cannot scoop cool water
from
the moon in a mirage
without
it tasting like tears,
you
cannot clear the mountain from your throat
and
include exclusion in the note,
your
blood can’t change colour with the sky
or
run with the world stream
like
the last breath of a forgotten dream
that
was inspired by the truth of a lie
and
you’re not wheel and rudder enough
to
keep from scuttling your heart
like
a boat on a sealess moon
that’s
all shadows and reefs and shore.
Until
you don’t live here anymore
this
is not your home, until
you
return like a river or an exile
to
your first unknowable address,
your
roots can’t celebrate the light and the rain
by
offering up a tree or a flower or a poem
that
grows out of you again and again
until
all your leaves and feathers have let go.
The
child drops the ball
like
a drop of midnight dew
from
the grassblade of an exclamation mark
and
opens its hands like the sky
to
the intimate emptiness
that
could hold a bird
without
disturbing a feather.
So
do I reach for you now
like
the air reaches for the rain without grasping
when
the mindmirrors have breathed out their last ghosts
and
the moon shyly ripens
on
the theme of her green branch among the leaves
and
the stone mind holds back
what
it had to say like silver,
and
the mind stone
holds
its tongue like a sword in a rock
and
keeps the pain to itself
like
the wounded throne of kings
and
the darkness is tined and tinged with furtive whispers
as
if it were talking to itself
to
hear who might be listening.
So
do I reach for you now
as
if I could breathe
the
subtleties of the blue luminosity
that
saturates the night with the fragrance of your mystery in
and
fill my lungs with light
and
startle my weary heart with unwary delight.
And
it’s been the better part of two weeks
since
this poem started flowing
down
from your mountain closer to the stars
into
me like a new bloodstream
and
the dry creekbeds of the echoless valley
that
had abstained from answering me
were
suddenly shocked into this pulse
that
has sponsored my emptiness back into being.
And
it’s certain I’ve said too much about too little
and
too little about too much
and
often mistaken the silence
for
the eloquently unsaid
and
maybe only the dead should speak for the living,
and
everything of light
is
just another blindfold
that
goes looking for what it might be
before
it can see
like
the nights we walk out on ourselves for good
wishing
we could,
but
be all that as it wills and unwills,
the
geese fly overhead through the darkness
like
thoughts across the moon
growing
a face as it rises
to
advance its urgency through space
much
as I have in this whose seeing
is
the resonance of grace
that
brought it into being
just
as your eyes do me.
And
there’s no doubt I haven’t said
what
can’t be said,
that
I’ve shed more petals
than
light on the issue,
that
I’ve pointed at the moon with smoke
and
it’s pointed back at me with a hook
and
we’ve both suspected the other a hoax
that
might bring us together
if
there were a backend on the joke
worth
appending like the tail on the donkey
that
looks into the well
and
the well looks back.
And
maybe what’s trying to say me to you
is
not so much a revelation
as
an unconcealing
and
there are things in the silence
that
there aren’t enough poets to say
and
too many prophets in the pews to pray
and
it’s always going to be this way.
And
I’ve given up trying to corner time in the present
at
a nexus of dimensions
that
penetrate me like light
through
a diamond voodoo doll.
No
one’s ever been older or younger than now
and
the flower in spring
and
the leaf in the fall
are
the same ageless continuum of beginnings
that
indelibly flashes through us all
like
no one’s dream
without
a curtain-call
as
if we were made up as the play went along.
And
nothing’s ever deeply right or deeply wrong
whether
the wind wears shoes or not
or
the moon forgets one of her phases
or
occasionally something takes our breath away
like
non-existence
or
gives it back like you,
the
descent of a feather
brighter
than light
in
a darkness older than night.
PATRICK
WHITE
