FUMAROLE

FUMAROLE

The beast of a thousand unconsummated yesterdays

born without names in the gutter

roars in the rags of its own blood

for the poxy apricot of the rising moon. My voice

is a guitar without strings, the dark well

of an eclipse that eats the dragon

that has lingered too long in the depths without stars.

The crazy windows in this burning room

plead for a reason, a purpose, a sign

as they weep themselves into weary honey, sick

of the equity of their seeing, the sloppy script

of another dirty winter that scrawled

its drunken name in the amber penmanship

and metaphysical sunsets of nicotine

encrypted like scars or dry creekbeds

in the guestbooks of their sagging eyes. On the sill,

the ashes of birds, of stars, of dead fly hearts

smaller than the nuggets of gold

panned by the convict bees from the feigned tears

of the cocktease flowers who know how

to renew their virginity by giving it up

like a handful of keys to anyone who knocks. Hot ores

adumbrated into the slag of unapproachable islands

and treacherous harbours in chastity belts.

And though I know better, accepting

what I cannot change in this graveyard

of geriatric storms that have blown themselves out

against the implacable glass that disguises itself as the sky

and waits with its decoy of clouds

for the inadvertent sparrow

to dash the nut of its brain against the impassable windowpane,

I long for a heart of brick, a stone of dried blood

worked loose like a tooth from a crumbling temple

to smash my way out of this brittle museum of things,

this menagerie of balanced coffins

and cordless spinal columns

that account for nothing but the unearthly stillness and vacuity

of a reasonable effort to survive surviving

without a taint of life exceeding

their industrious accountancy. And though I know,

how has it not been drummed into me

by suffering the violet penalties

of love and prismatic separations, the madness

of trying to bridge your own mindstream

to the further shore with the peacock rainbows

of midnight oilslicks that let their serpents down

like the hair of a drowning Medusa, and though I know

and know and know the sad alleys

and unforgivable garbage that reeks like an over-ripe moon

in the cul-de-sacs that enshrine the priestly drunks,

did I not once tear my own heart out at their altars,

and wait for a divinity to seize me

like a flower of fire in ice, still, this long probation

that leaves me with nothing to confess

is a skeleton trying to masturbate, a chain of enslaving orbits

hauling the moon by the nose to a vicious market

that bids for exotic desecrations

to gild its impotence with curious compulsions. And my crime?

I ignored the prevalent hypocrisies of improvement

and self-advancement to occupy

my own harvest-throne in the midst of plenty

and raise myself up like a siege of gratitude

on mystic ladders that scaled

the burning towers of the stars. I obeyed

the stratagems of fire that voiced

the assaults of wonder I launched

like occupation fleets against the willing surrender

of my own mind liberated from the sapphire dungeons

of its own birthstone, the inherited castles of quicksand

that betrayed their own foundations. There was no clemency

in the sentence of the passing years

that hung me like a trophy

in a straitjacket of spider-webs, no poetry

in this exile from light, this starless sky

that no one has ever looked upon with yearning,

no music in the rain that falls from this nuclear winter

that nuns the cauldron of a sterile sea. And though I know

my fate might well be righteously imposed

because I played while others toiled, sang and danced

and squandered the abundant summers of my heart

on the impossible empires in a woman’s eyes,

made dice of the stars and rolled them against

the impregnable walls of chance like constellations,

thrilled by getting away with life

while my blood was still green and brave with expectation,

is it just that my shadow should die before me

longing to be buried in the light

as if it weren’t a suicide; is it God, and mercy, and reason and right

that a warrant for my freedom should have been issued

before a law was contrived to contest it

in the meager forums of feeble appetites? Damn me if you must

to the absurd tillage of these forsaken acres,

yoking the moon to a glass plough

that shatters on the prophetic skulls

of an unrocked cemetery opposed like salt

to the impudent resurrection of the dead.

A volcano thrust through the fault in your seed bed

I will install my shadow

like the relic of a sacred nail

in the perilous hole

it will drive

through your unhallowed head.

PATRICK WHITE

NO MATTER HOW FAR

NO MATTER HOW FAR

No matter how far into the past the star travels,

plunging its white fingers into the expanding womb of the past

to pull its own damp head out of convulsive space,

it will never find a beginning, the widening cleft between two thoughts

opening like a mouth full of silence, a sluice gate of thick water,

a dark prelude, the first letter alpha breaking like an eye

out of the eclipsed envelope into a splendour of light

to hang its jewel, its drop of flammable water

from the incredible webs of the night,

to shine alone in the dark with millions,

the elemental heart of an abandoned lover. The void

became a tuning fork and struck itself, became

a nugget of gold and dropped itself into the world pond

sinking like a throne through a center of infinite haloes,

disappearing into the origin of its own undulant pulse,

a fish leaping out of the stillness of the mirror

into the encircling waves of its own event

or an arrow into the target of its own ripples,

or God lost in his own universe without a return address.

Where now is the desolate monkey

forced down out of the trees

to stand up in the high conquering grass to look for leopards

who first shrieked into consciousness

or sat down quietly on his heels

to ponder the odd blue stone of a thought he couldn’t grasp?

Where is he who has gone on expending himself

like the first violin of a tribal symphony

through the blind abyss of the blood all the way to me?

Is there a skull that lies cracked and quarried somewhere,

a fallen idol in a temple of shattered bones,

a small, moldy moon clotted with earth

who was the first to become aware of himself

as a paling star who would be washed out

in the brightening flood of the following dawn? Did he glimpse it all in a flash,

as the seed contains the whole of the tree, the blossoms

the singing branches, the closed eyelids of the apples,

did he see in the lightning gap between matter and mind,

in the first atom of self-brained sentience

all the murderous troupes of civilization

that would walk out of that first step, that progenitive initial

that goes on unspooling the maple samara

of the helical generations down even

into the bloodstreams and wellsprings of the lines of this poem?

Did he see the continuum of his own beginning

moving outwardly in time like a viper

through the oceanic fire-wombs of a nubile cosmos,

the world serpent that would marry the world

with a rib of light? Did he see me as I am this morning,

elaborated in all directions like rain from his watershed,

trying to make lifeboats out of the leaves to survive

this oblique sliding into the depths

of my own gashed being, the vagrant omega

of a maritime disaster morsed between two sibilants,

like an egg between the forked tongue

of a torn chromosome, this feeble S.O.S. I’ve sent back

through the anguish of the years to find me, to find him,

to shut the eye of the circle, a tail

in search of a mouth that could create what it consumes

in a single breath, a single word wholly sufficient

for all eternity, unborn, unperishing?

And it is not enough to say that the peduncle

is lost in the ensuing phylum, the root in the tree, the tree

in the seed and the seed again in the leaves and branches;

am I given eyes and nothing to see, wonder

and nothing to be amazed by, the blue wheel

of a flowering heart and nothing to feel? Homage

to the fallen bell of my unsung ancestor, male or female,

and the way he picked himself up off the ground,

homage to his pendulous walking across the plain;

and the tracks he followed through the luminous mud of his brain,

saying his name with his feet; homage and compassion

for the brute in lunar shock

before the rising of the moon through the startled dark,

homage to the lightning and the firefly

that jarred him out of his uterine revery

like metal from the ore of a stone. Homage

to the horror and grief and genius of the huge hope

he buried in himself with red ochre and bird-bone flutes

like the bodies of his children under the fire and ashes of his cave;

I bring black cherries, wheat, and scarlet poppies,

I bring the immaculate weave of the starfields,

sapphires and silk, and the wisdom of the wind,

the passion of fire, the will of water, the beauty of light,

and the freedom of infinite space,

and I scatter the worlds like opal grains of sacred rice

over the wedding carbons of your baffled remains

and I fill the clay moulds of the footprints you left behind

with the fleets and caravans and flights of mind

that were born of your bruised heel,

your circuitous pilgrimage toward bison and berries, you

the brutal mile zero of the highways through the mountains, you

the first drop of rain in the headwaters of the river, you

the first feather of empathy that danced to fly, you

the first prayer to divine the green valleys of an afterlife

where the silver gazelles came down every night

to the water’s edge, gifts of the great mother’s thighs.

Like a prodigal son returning to the boneyard of his cannibal parents,

without judgment, I bring you the sugars of a ripened mind

and the fat of my sedentary flesh

to gorge on as you wish. And though we shudder with progress

over the excavated skulls in the hovels of the homophagoi,

we unmarrow each other no less. So praise

to your broken, battered, disease-ridden body,

your muscled weapon and your withered breasts

that hung like oriole’s nests from a rack of bone; praise

to the beast master and savage cauldron of your mind

from which you drew the elegant visions of a predator

you charred at the end of your tunnels on lime.

This morning I practice the same art for the same mysteries

on the same dank womb-walls of efflorescent time,

following the spoor of these migrant histories

back to you. Faster than light I must outrun myself to regress,

and I come with poems and paintings and problems

and a forwarding address.

PATRICK WHITE

TO A YOUNG POET

TO A YOUNG POET

As you are now, and I have been

a long branch at the top of the tree

in a black spring, reaching out

for the fury of a distant star

to adorn your spine

with a leaf of light

that might be the sail

on a boat full of worlds

that will thunder like windfall fruit

or an army of hearts

pulsing across the drumhead plain

of your moon-salt thoughts,

their liberation, a sea of blood,

a squall of vipers, a murder,

and a brazen idol away

from the beguiling taste of another paradise. What

does this mean? This means

I come before you

like a brutal lighthouse without a warning,

unfolding wings of light like a stormbird

slipped like a letter

under the door of huge winds

that have driven most sailors to shore,

prudently seasoned

by what the ocean can do. But you are

a creature of the depths,

a volcanic thermophile

grown gigantic in your darkness

and your solitude, the Cyclopean shadow

you would cast on the castle walls

in the tiniest burning house of time

if only there were light and life enough

to convince the grotesque it’s beautiful;

the folly of your unknown world

is the secret wisdom of a second moon. Not

insane enough yet

to be a credible witness

to the antics of your own asylums

where the mad angels

swear you’re real and fling you like a drug

they won’t take across

the lunar floor

of your infamous acquiescence, I come to you

like a prophetic lighthouse, arms of light

outstretched on the edge of a towering cliff,

pleading like a Druid with God

for answers I could sacrifice

like rams and humans

to questions on the altars of a mountain brain

that heaves me like a continent

up out of the depths and opens my mouth

to announce a black wind in the abandoned caves of silent oracles.

I can hear the whisper

of the serpent ghosting through the grass

in a cemetery of dead echoes, and I can read the names

of the midnight shipwrecks

you have suffered on the inclement shores

of your own island consciousness. Are you marooned

or is it that you’re just choosey

about rescues and life-boats?

Unfolding these petals of light like straitjackets, like tides,

I come before you,

a navy sunk in a well on the moon,

no footprints on the map to where your treasure is buried

like the jewels and wishbone harps of the dead.

I’ve always disappointed my own wisdom,

and the dark-hearted clowns

of the suicidal circus

that waits like a sense of humour

for an encore,

have long ago died without applause

like unexploded shells

far from their badly-aimed humanity.

Like the universe, whose life

hasn’t been a clown

shot out of a cannon

without a safety-net? So

I come before you without a face, a mask,

a self, or the worn-out authority of a wound

scarred like a book out of the sum

of all my failures, offering

these simulacra of keys to what

has no need of a lock, but conceals your fate

in a mouthless rumour of intimate stars.

And I do not come to fill the dead seabeds of the moon

with tears and raise vast armadas against the fact;

no one need tell the wind the world is sad,

nor multiply the horrors of hell like bitter weeds

in the ashes of the wheat when fire itself,

so long the nun of its own burning,

pledged to ferocious purities,

is corrupted by what it consumes.

And among these murmurs of murder and war,

these corpses and civilizations sandbagged into seawalls

against this toiling deluge of blood, who

but the most unfeeling, could indulge

the obscenity of the lie

that life is beautiful or good

in the radiant marrow of the bone

cracking like a flute in the jaws of an iron dog?

Nor do I come scrying fissures in the sky

marking annual Armageddons

in a calendar of vengeful tomorrows. If the world

isn’t already worthy of love

it could never be worthy of hatred.

No curse, no blessing, no reform or utopian felicity,

ignorance and enlightenment both

one heartbeat shy of the truth,

and freedom, compassion, genius,

three brides on a bridge of snails,

how could I come before you clearly

if there were anything in my hands? Fire

doesn’t need a teacher to burn

nor the wind an instructor to fly

and if you haven’t already been struck

like a birdless tree

by lightning on the moon

what farce of the sublime could show you

what you don’t need to know

to be what you are

when spring comes like a voice, a whisper of bliss,

a green arsonist, a jest of life

to the startled garden

in the rootless urn of your unsayable longing?

PATRICK WHITE

AUBADE WITH AMBIGUITIES

AUBADE WITH AMBIGUITIES

Everywhere I go

I am buckled by sorrows

weeping like executioners

in hooded doorways

for the harvest of doves

they’ve bloodied

with their smiles,

for the ruined roses

that stain the hospital gowns

of soft-spoken guillotines.

And when I ask

for the address

of a rumour of joy

that might risk

a cameo appearance in my heart,

I am caught in the traffic jam

of an outdoor movie

that is just another rerun

of misunderstood butterflies

draped in spider-webs.

And the restaurants are full

of lunar refugees

confessing the names of God

on a rosary of skulls

spooled from the mass graves

of irremedial exterminations;

and on the highways,

drug-soaked children,

famous among milk-cartons,

running from rescue

all the way to Calgary

with Eldorado serial killers

in cowboy hats.

I do not think I was born

to be happier

than any other man,

nor dance with rivers all my life

under the chandeliers

of waltzing willows,

I am content

to let the autumn stars

sugar the apples

and the wines of life

that have dreamed so long

of mystic bloodstreams

wake up from their coma

of midnight suns

to flirt with the morning curtains,

but everywhere I ask for water,

the odour of dogs

rotting in stairwells,

virulent mothers

blistering coke in baby spoons

and lonely adolescents

picking at the scabs

of their showcase labels

like empty whiskey bottles

cruising for flowers

on emergency fire-escapes.

And how could I ignore

the inconsolable clowns

in convulsions of grief,

and the reptilian angel-slayers

that rise from the depths

like snapping turtles

to unfeather the stupefied swans

as if they tore

the pages out of a book,

dragging the clouds down

into the hot mud

of ambiguous bottom feeders?

Everywhere the air

grows tumescent

on the yeasts of grief

and the planet groans

like a death-cart

full of starfish, full

of fractured wish-bones,

full of the severed hands

of TV amputees.

And I want to pay the late fees

on the lightning that struck

the horns of the snail

like a war-crime, I want

to green the emeralds again

that were bleached in a flash

by the physics of food, my heart

burns to proclaim to the tribunals

that reek of thick colognes

and pounds of atrocious innocence,

that humans were born

to see and be amazed,

that there are still plants

in the scalded jungles

that will come forward

like shy cures, and golden salamanders

that will give us back our legs and arms,

that we’re not just a necropolis

of flesh-eating bacteria,

that there are truths and beauties

and ethics of water

that aren’t just triumphal marches

under the arches of our vertebrae,

that there are gods at work

like tender waterlilies

transforming the swamp,

turning the shit back

into intimate constellations

that won’t dwarf the night

with staggering distances

or runt the wonder

of our brevity

with the unattainable radiance

of reversible wedding gowns.

I want to make it all better,

breeze the pain

with blue-eyed summers

from a cedar hope chest,

appease the hungry

with mountains of bread

ored from miraculous grains,

talk the bridges down

from their keystone suicides

by showing them what’s needed

to get to the other side;

do everything I can

to grant immunity

to the bloodbank

that cries constantly

under my window at night

for braver transfusions,

give up an eye if I must

to defray the cost

of blind justice,

do whatever it takes

to prune the hazardous stars

from the razorwire crowns

of our unexempted suffering.

But everywhere I go,

roadkill redirecting traffic,

arsonists in volunteer fire brigades

pissing on a field that’s burning,

closet terrorists in uniformed bomb squads,

defusing suspect shopping-malls,

computer-generated humans

mechanizing the rights of man,

soldiers safer in the army

than children in their beds,

leaders following the followers

in climacterics of lemmings,

the rich bitching the poor

are the reason they suffer,

deviants preaching deliverance

to delinquents on their knees,

free markets enslaving nations

to brand-names on demand,

banks robbing the wretched

to give to those with more,

genocide on probation

while murder goes to jail,

excellence cowed by fools

when ignorance runs in schools,

doctors despising health

as an obstacle to wealth.

Anyway, you get the picture.

When the fleas

train the tigers

to jump through fire

and the crows

coach the hawks

to look for silver,

or the avalanche

tells the mountain

where to stand

for a photo-op,

even if you feel,

even if the heart

bleeds like a blackberry

punctured by thorns,

and you’re up

to your neck

in a starless tarpit

darker than night,

and the bombs fall

like meteors like

the foundation stones

of crystal palaces,

is there a point

a pebble

an afterlife under

these quicksand pyramids,

these deserts in an hourglass,

this crack in the dawn

to build another world upon?

PATRICK WHITE