EVENTUALLY THE MOON

EVENTUALLY THE MOON

 

Eventually the moon

struggles out of its cradle

like a sulphur butterfly

out of its house of change.

And far, far away

in the loneliest of deserts

that cling to a skull like thoughts

someone waits like water

spilled from the countless eyes

that have looked to her

like a cool eclipse for healing.

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

but she makes their wounds seem beautiful

and their madness a fashion of God

running naked through the surf

of an orchard in bloom.

Twice in a doorway

and once in a grocery store

in broad daylight

I have tasted the black rose

of her collusive shadow

opening all her eyelids

like phases of the far side of the moon in me,

unspooling the fragrance of her darkness

to sweeten the night that overcomes me

whenever I see her.

Dark beauty, cormorant, stars pour

from the shapely pitcher of your body

into the dry wishing wells of my eyes

and all things are granted in a moment

it would take a lifetime to repair.

Sphinx without history,

black box of the mystery,

I dream and drift

with the serpentine currents

of these themes of you

like the pale lifeboats

of blossoms and poems on the nightstream

and everywhere

I’m building bridges in the air.

And a great tenderness shakes me

as I press the head of an arrow to my lips

like the last jewel of a foolish prince

or the shadow of a bird against the moon

or a crazy wise man’s last word

and release it like a spirit with flare

to fire the night with fountains and flowers

to summon you here with me

like the alluring simulacrum

of an unspoken intimacy

that inspires my eyes to see

beyond the dark gates

and flaming swords of poetry,

and the light that brings peace to the garden,

and the law that can only be kept

by the breaking of it

and the sad music of compassionate hearts

that have been broken like bells

and the children whose blood

was violently spilled

and runs like a river through hell

we’ll all have to cross one godforsaken night,

beyond the infinite expanse of the middle extreme

like a third wing on a bird

that baffles the guardian dragons,

beyond the clarity and the darkness

of the wisdom and the lies

where the rivers meet for sex

and the lowest stars on the horizon

are the flashbacks of enlightening psychodelics,

talking in the unbroken code

of the mandalic relics

that yarrow the Book of Changes

like the ups and downs

of fossils swimming through stone.

Beyond the wind

that blows the stars into my eyes

like chimney sparks and firelies

and rattles the diamond bones

of the skeletal chandliers

that dance to their own music

and saturates the summer night air

with the most poignant of delusions,

and further beyond the wind that clarifies

the eyes of the wounded water

that fell on the swords of its own waves,

beyond what condemns and saves,

beyond the palaces of the slaves who master

and the palaces of the masters who enslave,

and the quicksand cornerstone hovels

of those who uphold them,

and the revolutions that fail for their own sake

to escape the wheel of the prophecies that foretold them

like the blood of a dove in the heart of a snake,

beyond the ashes of the burning cities

that gave a human voice to the flames

like oxygen that screams

and the barely audible syllables

of people without names

who were hurriedly buried in pits at night

like the student bodies

of old backdoor universities

that dared to indict the juntas of death

that covered their eyes like sunglasses on a skull

to witness their own eclipses

in the outhouse pulpits

of a war crimes trial.

Beyond the beatific and the vile,

the black mirror and the white

that God keeps up her sleeve

to trump whatever you believe

until the candle goes out

like the seer and the seen

and you are left alone in the dark

before the arising of eyes and signs

bore witness to the singular event

of that mysterious seeing

that brought the world into being

that you know as your own life

that darkness within darkness

where you must go like a star

by your own light

like a lamp already

beyond its long journey

without a guide.

Beyond all this in a space

I cannot locate or name

as if God spoke in a foreign language

in a native tongue of flame

when she created this world of desire

that keeps pouring its heart out like an urn

to renew its capacity for death,

for churning ashes into honey

without getting burned,

where the universe forsakes its own laws

like a straitjacket

and the freedom is not the freedom

of the crazy or the sane

still handcuffed to each other

like two ends of the same bone

they keep running through forensics

to distinguish the perp from the crime,

but a sublime profusion of cool bliss

that I exist to feel this eclipse

in the heart of the shining

and drink this dark elixir

from the well

of a homeless mirage on the moon

as if it were more real than water

and watch in unadmonished wonder

how it deranges me creatively

like stars agitated by the unknown atmosphere

of a planet that’s wandered far off the path alone

past the thirteenth house of the zodiac

waiting in its illegitimacy

like eyes at a window

to be acknowledged by the sun

across the tracks

of the proper perspective

into shipshifting constellations of its own

that grow as the night grows

and can’t be retold

in a familiar voice

around the same fire twice.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SURFING THE ABYSS

SURFING THE ABYSS

 

Surfing the abyss,

calm in the turmoil of things

and my heart as free as a river

to pursue its own deranged clarities

downstream to wherever that leads

and even the bridges flow.

And if a smile comes to my lips

like a dove returning with no word of land,

remembering some odd moment

from the inside from years ago,

I kiss it on the head and let it go

like a message in a bottle of snow.

The moon has overtaken Jupiter

and a cold whip is mentoring the breeze

but the stars have not grown fierce

and it still astonishes me

how intimate and inwardly shining

you can become with things

that know nothing about you.

Good to be alone like this again

without a beginning or an end

without knowing a damn thing

except the wonder

of what it’s all about.

Sometimes the cool bliss

of beauty aware of itself.

Sometimes its inconsolable passage.

And then the times like now

when even the lowliest elements of my humanity

are enhanced by an emptiness without exclusion

and a great tenderness

settles over everything that lives

and nothing offends, and nothing forgives

and love everywhere masters its own discipline

and is free of grief and pain

not as ashes are free of the fire

or bad wine is poured from the cup

but as the genius of desire

that enflames them to grow

their own flowers

without pulling weeds from a grave

or losing their voice in the darkness

like a sundial

in the gardens of the dead

when night comes on without an explanation.

Just these epiphanies of life as it is

when no one is watching;

just this seeing without eyes

without light,

just these black beatitudes

in the unglazed mirrors of meaning

that never reflect upon themselves

by looking back.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIRE'S THE NEW EVANGELIST

FIRE’S THE NEW EVANGELIST

 

Fire’s the new evangelist

in the churches of the trees

that enflames them into new crusades

in the seasonal holy land

of temperate September

when no one really cares

in the fullness and beauty of life

to be summoned anywhere

that isn’t here now

like asters in the tall, warm grass,

and every glowing stone,

every thought

the Dome of the Rock

in a city of jewels

worthy of their eyes.

Things seem suspended

like particles of dust

in an elixir of light

that holds everything alike

in the folds of its nurturing pervasiveness

like a manger of honey and water

where anyone can lay their head.

And there’s hardly a distinction

that can be held up

like a blade of grass

between the living and the dead

as if they both remembered each other

like something that wasn’t said,

a tenderness left undone,

a secret shared so long

they both realize

like a sister

in the features of a brother

they are born of the same mother.

Time is the slow voice of space

articulating the changes

in a human face

like the shifting sands

of the rivers that fray

like the fragile threads

of what was once

the strong rope of a river

in the deltas around my eyes.

Space may be vague,

but time is very specific

in the way everything lives and dies

with every breath we take,

as if we were sloughing

the skin of a cosmic snake

like a world we’d outgrown like water

when a morning mist

unspools over the lake

that once received us like swords.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOT THE SUM

NOT THE SUM

 

Not the sum of all your yesterdays

and more than all of your tomorrows

could ever dream of being,

not a negligible, small thing,

nor great beyond proportion,

you inhabit your own mystery

like a godess who feels like a stranger

in her own universe,

trying to get the hang of it

like the slang of a foreign language

that won’t let her across the border

without picture i.d.

You long for something

and immediately summon

everything that’s missing

in the spirit’s lost and found,

no life, no answer, no sound,

no lamp in the hand of the nightwatchman

flashing like the moon

through your broken windows.

It’s impossible to pick the berry

from the thorn of yourself

as a first drop of blood

gathers like an eye

at the tip of your wounded finger

and even if you did manage

to raise it like a kiss to your lips,

is it sweet, is it bitter,

or does love taste like the sea?

That simulacrum you call yourself

may be a work of art,

an amazement of mirrors

that dance like water

when you enhance the night

like a lonely heart

with the grace of your reflection,

but even the moon

can get in your eye sometimes

and smear the view with hot tears

for all you might have been

before you broke your brushes

like crutches

at the foot of your masterpiece.

Dogen Zenji said

in the middle of the thirteenth century

just a moment ago in medieval Japan:

When the truth doesn’t fill your body and mind

you always feel as if you’ve had enough,

but when the truth does fill your body and mind,

you always feel as if something were missing.

That’s a jewel that’s worth turning in the night.

That’s the dark heart

that summons you into the mystery

like an intimacy beyond

your own personal history.

Why waste your time

trying to find out

how many demons

can dance on the heads of the pins

in the heart of a voodoo doll,

or angels, if you’re a better liar?

You’re just trying to imagine a heaven

without fire

and ashes that rise like doves

from the chimneys of Auschwitz.

Is it any wonder then

that every moon you eat

like an unhappy fortune-cookie

tastes like an eclipse?

And I’ve never known

whether you’re trying to improve

the standing of the world

in your person

or your person

in the standing of the world

when you turn heads

like a sphinx in the rain

that never looks anyone’s way.

But if you were to look deeply

into the nature of any grain of sand

it would make the pyramids

look like mere child’s play,

the first alphabet blocks

of a desert with something to say to the stars

high overhead and so very very, intimately far away

like the small bells of longing

that bruise the heart of a lost child

who knows that no one

is coming to look for her

who can see

through anyone’s eyes but their own

what it means to be alive in the world alone.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I SEE YOUR LEAF OF FIRE

I SEE YOUR LEAF OF FIRE

 

I see your leaf of fire

still burning on the Tay River

like an autumn of falling maps

that have come to the end of their lifelines.

Now the trees of Perth read their own shadows

like the wake of impossible journeys

that slip through their leafless masts

like wind and water and stars.

But you have outgrown them

like a lifeboat

beyond the reach of their tears.

And the romantic in you is not dead

and the outlaw thrives

and you are still enthralled

by the dark honey

that flows from the cosmic hives

of the illuminati on the nightshift.

And I see you’ve stopped throwing

your firstborn off a cliff

without a parachute.

And I can still hear the distant thunder

of the dice you roll

like the bones of a sphinx

when you gamble with the Book of Changes.

Your solitude like your beauty

is still the single star

of an alluring beautitude

in a black mirror

that shows the night its face.

And deep, deep within yourself

you remain the sole keeper

of the dark mass of the universe

you’re refining in your furnace-heart

like the ore of the light.

And I can see how the ocean

still endures its own weather

in the green of your eyes.

Experience has its grazers

and its predators, too,

and some farm their lives

and some try to train their sheep to hunt,

but you still know how to go for the jugular

on the neck of a wounded guitar

you’ve brought down

like a fleeing gazelle from behind.

You eat experience

and leave small remnants of the heart

for the scavengers to find.

And I can tell by the tone of your voice

that pain has added its ambiguous vowel

to your vocabulary

and there’s blood on the crescents of the moon

that have torn the sail

of many arrivals and departures

as you came and went

in all your phases

like a calendar of scars.

And what a delight

after all these years

to see you’re still playing pool

with your stars,

breaking balls

and taking the long shot,

chalking your stick on a skull.

And there’s that demon of night again

that black rose in a crown of thorns

that’s sometimes so sad and alone

in the incomprehensible vastness of things

when emotions silver the stone

like lost earrings

more than once I have thought of you

as the last of a species

of fallen angels

left to stand guard alone

like a dolmen on the moon

over the only grave that would receive them

when Valhalla put down its sword.

And yet how easily you give yourself away

like generous bread

to the outcasts

who still gather at your firegate

as if the moon were a soft-hearted oven

they couldn’t burn their fingers on.

You say you’re afraid of decaying,

you say you’re overwhelmed.

Thieves are boosting the stars

in your downtown windows

and everyone’s trying to ditch their scars

like the accent of a foreign language

that died like water on Mars

when the sirens lost their voice

to the wind that passed like a sailor.

And money and art

are an eye of oil in the ocean

that can’t find anyway out of the mix

of the fluid labyrinth

that chokes you in its coils

except by seeing it out to the end

like an unwanted loveletter

you don’t know where to send.

So let the river take it like a leaf

or a black candle

the corner of a starmap

that gave up looking for life

on the bright side of everything

when the mirror was smeared

by the silver trail of a snail

that was amazed to find itself

blazing away

like the tail of an anonymous comet

at the heart of a cosmic scandal

as it trespassed across the glass eye

of an indicted telescope

that bore false witness to the shining.

You can’t tinker rings

out of what the maggots are mining

and much to the surprise

of their afterlife

they’ll never turn into butterflies.

Who looks for exposure

like a blackmailed photo in their eyes

when you know, as you do,

how to burn like dawn in a diamond

without a feather of light

to take your measure

in those scales

you always tip toward life?

The dew on the grass is not the same thing

as the little gram-masters of Gore Street

watering their pound,

and the stars that shine down

on everyone and everything alike

can’t be railed by a razor on a mirror

because they’re not trying

to make an impression on the night

by snorting the light

until their shadows can see

what life looks like

in all its futility and madness 

through the eyes of the rain

looking in through a hospital window

like small children in deep pain

they can’t do anything about.

But when the lights go out

there are intensities

that can be pursued

like dolphins in the oceanic moonlight

tides beyond the tidal-pools of the obvious

cluttered like lost keys

and broken shells

that think they still speak for the sea

at the bottom of their museum drawers.

The fools go looking for a vein

like cables to jumpstart the stars

between one battery heart and another

and end up cooking in their own acids

but there are lightning rods

beyond these jaded polarities

that have looked into the darkness

and seen things in a flash of insight

that have made mystics of the weathervanes

and settled once and for all

the chronic conceptual wars

between our mirrors and our windowpanes

that keep upgrading their armies

to lay siege to our mud-walled brains.

It takes more courage

to be some people than others

and even more, sometimes, not to be;

but who’s got a word

for the dark clarity

of the unspeakable genius it takes

to make a Jesse?

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fish bring their own lamps in the depths