LILACS AND CRAB-APPLES IN BLOSSOM

LILACS AND CRAB-APPLES IN BLOSSOM

 

Lilacs and crab-apples in blossom

and here and there a wild cherry

abandoned in an old farmyard

like an unfashionable chandelier

that kept on dancing with itself

long after the stars went out.

If for nothing else I was born

to tell the trees how beautiful they are.

What an elegance and grace of earth.

Embodiments of time in the concrete.

Brides at the weddings of matter.

The solid become real. Mind

when it gives up looking for itself.

Fountains and clouds.

Life whispering into its own ear

about the birds and the bees

in a native language of its own

that blooms like the demotic tongues

of a Babylonian renaissance

that doesn’t need a translation.

Life says so much without meaning to.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU'RE FREE TO BE FREE

YOU’RE FREE TO BE FREE

 

You’re free to be free.

You’re free to be bound.

Attachment too is a Buddha activity.

Unborn

there’s no need to begin.

No beginning.

No end.

Draw your own conclusions

but don’t be a small snake

and get swallowed by a larger.

Move on according to your own wavelength

and let go of everything

like a myth of skin

like a tatoo you just had removed

now that the romance is over

and time’s fallen out of love with eternity.

Separation where there should be love.

Modernity’s the ultimate divorce.

We’ve disinherited the planet.

And all our children

are spiritually illegitimate.

Boo hoo

plays a little blue violin

on the streetcorner

outside the bank

and runs to buy a rock

he can crank like music

with the small change

of compassionate passers-by.

I’m alive now as I ever was

and I’m not a time-traveler from the sixties

having been here all along

but I was young in that generation

and if we were better than anybody at anything

I think it was

we didn’t lie to our imagination.

But I wouldn’t bet on it

knowing the mind’s greatest virtue

is not that it remembers so much

but that it knows so easily how to forget.

Smoke is not the historian of the fire.

Shadows are not the ink of the light.

Thoughts don’t know if there’s a mind

anymore than you know

if there’s a god

and your feelings have never heard of a heart

that makes a damn bit of difference.

Each of these things has a life of its own

but death doesn’t know anything about life

and what is there for life to live through

that can only live through itself

like water being a fish

that you could possibly experience as death?

Does the fish swim out of the water?

Does the bird fly out of the sky?

The great sea of awareness sheds its sky like skin

and swims on through itself.

You can’t pour the universe out of the universe.

Water finds the witching wand

like seeing finds the star

that’s been following it.

You are what you are what you are

and that’s not a consolation

not a victory or defeat

not Buddhas at your feet

or the chains of your leftover freedom.

It’s not Merlin killing stones with chemical Excaliburs

or the curse of a heavy life even Atlas couldn’t lift.

It’s the mystic specificity

of your own irreversible life

flowing down the mountains of matter 

saying you into existence

every moment of it

like water talking to itself in the womb.

And time speaks with a human voice

about the sadness of its passing

and the eye that seeks the seer

looks in all the best directions

for the jewel of its enlightenment

like a mirror held up to space

looking back at its own unshapely face.

And that’s who we are

when we don’t stop to think about it.

We’re not lumps of intelligence

in the dark matter of it all

or crude approximations

of futures that never happen.

Our lives our lies our truths

our sorrows and joys

our love and disappointment

our foolishness and wisdom

our compassion and savagery

the things we keep faith with

and the things we betray

everything we are

and everything we are not

aren’t the masters of the medium of us

as if we were the stuff

the universe worked with

to shape small statues of itself

like a terracotta army it could take to the tomb

as a precautionary keepsake or momento mori.

We’re not the story of heroic elements

transcending themselves

around a periodic table.

That’s just another scientific fable

about the subjugation of Tiamat by Marduk

and how humans were made out of the filth

of her dismembered son Kingu

to serve the gods like faithful dogs.

White dwarfs shrinking heads into blackholes

as if oxygen could be enslaved by hydrogen

and her bitter tears turn into water.

And hydrogen beget helium

and helium begat carbon

and carbon beget us

like a polygamist at an orgy with oxygen.

Cowards coerce power with superstition

like mind maggots replacing the seeds

in the core of the apple of knowledge.

True gods don’t need to be served.

And real love doesn’t demand you do anything.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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