GOING THROUGH A DARK TIME
Going through a dark time. Antares, the
red ant,
the bitter berry in the heart of
Scorpio. Why not
blame it on the stars? How could they
deny it?
Living penumbrally in the eclipse of a
celestial body.
I want to paint my first old rusty bike
that I found
languishing under the neighbour’s
stairs, its
deflated tires, spider looms and jinxed
prayer wheels
that hadn’t turned for years, want to
paint it
with model airplane enamels again and
run
a perfect red stripe down the middle of
a black fender
gleaming like anthracite in the
blue-yellow sun.
How many worlds away I am from that
pure moment.
Dark in my heart, gnawing on the skulls
of dragons
that have finally become like the moon
that’s never known rain, a frozen
watershed
in a locket of ice and no light bulb in
the well.
I’m striding down the corridors of a
well-polished hell
and I’m turning the portraits of my
heroes toward the wall.
Why not? I’ve got no use for their
eyes anymore.
I’ve drained the lies out of the
samples of their deaths.
I’ve chewed the flavour out of what
it was they had to teach.
I’ve trashed my best features in
dangerous neighbourhoods.
I’ve broken my own brain like bread
with them,
offered them my blood like a rose with
teeth
and watched them evaporate like stars
in the sun
as if they never really knew they had
my devotion.
What I made of them to set my own
potential an example.
Something unattainable to aspire to
so I would be sure to lose as they did
preferring a brilliant failure to a
mediocre triumph.
I think the quality of a human is a
direct function
of the depth of their suffering. And I
loved the ones
who cried out so beautifully in their
agony
the night birds didn’t dare lift
their tiny voices
up again for fear of being put to shame
for the pettiness of their desire. Or
the wolves
ever howl at the moon again without
being aware
of the absurdity of their longing for
an old stone.
I have danced barefoot on the splinters
of the winter chandeliers that brought
the trees down
like a palace of tears in a brutal ice
storm.
I’ve heard the Pleiades crash like
silverware
all over the ground of a botched
burglary
and seen the junkies run like collapsed
veins
to pick the spoons up like fences and
crows.
Going through a dark time. The shamans
are dying in the treetops from the
shock
of what they had to see and live to be
if they wanted to die thoroughly back
into life again,
apprenticed to their own foreseeable
pain like savage healers.
Winged serpents angered by the
humiliation of the flesh
like a rose too beautiful not to be
abused
by those who desecrate life out of
their own self-hatred
that they are possessed by what they
despise the most
and beauty will have nothing to do with
their power
that isn’t forced, or broken, or
garbaged.
The mirrors of the spirit freak and
flake away
from the ideals of their silver lining
in horror.
Funny how you can come to look upon
even the most passionate of loveletters
with the eyes of a three hundred
million year old reptile
as if life could not be borne any other
way than as a thorn
through the heart of a voodoo doll
that cursed the good in life for the
passing of it.
What have I not buried in this desert
of stars
as if one night I would be able to come
back to it
and ask it what it dreamed of in my
absence?
To see if the afterlife of a mirage
tasted
like water, blood, or wine, or more
real than death,
the tears of someone who had aged into
understanding
when the windows that looked out on
life
like a valence of silicon dioxide slow
down
like glaciers of glass, and the mirrors
speed up
as if they were running out of time for
reflection.
Ask a man what he misses the most and
listen to the echo
of how long it takes to reach his ears
and if
there’s an ocean in his eyes he
drowns in
and I’ll reintroduce you to someone
you already know
talking to themselves in the dark to
keep from going mad.
Who toys with the smiles of their
approaching assassins
like the slash of a snake’s mouth
breaking into blossom?
Life is the puncture wound of the
staple
that was meant to mend it like a bridge
that sat cross-legged on a lotus in
meditation.
And it’s easy enough to look at the
fireflies after a storm
and the stars so out of touch with the
world as it is
you long for the innocence of the
childhood distances
you traversed every night you crawled
out of your sleep
to approach the mystery of your own
solitude
like an estranged familiar calling you
to come alone
to the furthest extremes of the night
and beyond.
Going through a dark time. Too many
gates.
Too many doors. Too many worn
thresholds
Too many threadbare carpets under the
one-sided window.
Too many dead birds killed by a lack of
transparency.
And still, I refuse the blindfold when
I’m standing
in front of a firing squad of stars
armed with the latest telescopes.
I’ve always been one of those who
prided myself
upon my strength to see it coming from
afar off
and stare at my own death in the third
eye of it.
And what monument could you possibly
raise
befitting someone who made exile and
rebellion
the two monolithic cornerstones of
their life
if not a rogue planet beyond the reach
of gravity
looking for a star they could thrive in
the light of
without the slightest shadow of
ulterior spontaneity?
Going through a dark time. I will not
put my eyes out
by turning up the light on what befalls
me,
as if there were something I could save
myself from.
I will eat every detail of the pain and
not waste
one unmarrowed bone of it. I will
consume it whole
like a prophet in the belly of the
whale, make the message
flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood,
and then
I’ll spit it out like a bullet I
pulled out of my heart
with my teeth, my soul, the elegance of
my desolation.
I’ll make key chains for the blind
out of spite
and striate the rocks of this cold
prison with the runes
of the horned ones who linger here with
me.
I’ll be a mile-high corrective lens
of ice
and putting one hand over my third eye
I’ll read the writing on the wall
from memory
and renounce every sacred syllable of
it like heretic
that thrives on fire, that scatters his
ashes in triumph
and feathers the wind like a gnostic
phoenix
with gospels of my own where there’s
not one imperative.
Pain demands my obedience, threatens to
break me.
I smash myself on the rocks like an
empty wine goblet
and say, you can break what remains.
You can grind
me down to dust, if you like, you can
step over me
like Spinoza lying down in the
threshold of the synagogue
to atone for what he opened the world’s
eyes up to,
but my vision of life, though a squall
of stars, remains my own
and the seeing isn’t in my eyes, and
the one who suffers
isn’t in chains, nor the door locked
on my heart
for fear of the night, for fear of
turning to stone
when I look the snake pit in the eye
with a microscope,
and observe the minutiae of the heart’s
addictive attention to detail.
Though every word be a thorn through my
tongue,
Yet will I sing of the agony of lemons
and roses
bleeding on the razorwire in No Man’s
Land for mercy,
and those compelled by the whips of
circumstance
to dance themselves to death because it
amuses the cripples,
and the little, amoebic man who never
amounted to anything
and his wife who has aged like salt in
a conquered city
still thinking she’s a garden
ornament, I will sing
in the name of what even the worst must
endure,
just to set this methane moon afire in
the darkness
like a furnace in an abandoned school
of unregenerate clowns.
Going through a dark time. A rite of
ordeals,
the brutal pit of the mystery you can
break your teeth on
like a koan or an iron-nickel tektite
in Antarctica
to get at the life inside your own
panspermic mind.
I should happily break my flesh like
bread upon the waters
for the fish and the birds, and save
the life
of an unworthy man from drowning
like bad meat in a well, or lose
my own precarious foothold on the
precipice of an abyss
that humbles me to the point of no
return. I should do this
for the thought-trains of the birds
that shall come after me
high and late at night through the bars
of my longing,
yearning to return to my ancestral
homelessness
like a wandering planet that doesn’t
give off any light of its own
but shines with life, despite the odds,
shines
tenaciously with life through all these
transformations
I take on like a river in its own
running,
pouring myself out of one life wholly
into another
like an igneous fireclock on the
nightshift
that keeps adding more carbon to my
steel.
Going through a dark time, I will not
suffer
this passage passively like smoke, I
will not plead
to abstract my senses from reality to
deaden the pain
or thin my blood with holy water from a
dirty fountain.
This dark child of my life shall not be
an orphan.
I will not disown the pain, I will not
drive
myself out into the wilderness like a
scapegoat
to wash the soot off the temple I cry
in
though they were my doves that were
stained
in their own blood in the name of a
useless sacrifice
to a unity that includes as much of
separation
as of love that welds a stronger bond
that doesn’t scar the spirit, or dull
the eyes,
or deaden the tongue to the taste of
the stars
on the lips of the people who pass
through our lives
like thresholds on their way to
somewhere else
than this palatial homelessness we
dwell in alone
throwing boundary stones like asteroids
through the mirrors
just to keep things abundantly clear
and open between us.
Going through a dark time. Swimming
through a tar pit.
Another doorway without an exit or an
entrance.
Another keel-hauling on the hull of the
moon
trying to maintain discipline aboard a
shipwreck.
And the unbearable sadness that crushes
your heart
like a pop can in the depths of an
unrevealing ocean.
Your face is a skin graft on a burn
victim.
People reach out for you, but only with
their hands
when there’s nothing at all, nothing
at all to grasp
of what has already come and gone for
good or bad,
who can tell? I’m centered like rain
in my falling.
And there’s something vaguely
radioactive about the way
I glow in the dark, though there are
dozens of dead fireflies
on my windowsill that dropped like
exhausted stars.
I move into the available dimension of
a future
that hasn’t won my confidence, and
the past
is the burnt foundation of a crack
house in the zodiac
cooking rocks like a meteor shower with
its radiant
in the eyes of everyone I meet who’s
trying to shoot the stars out.
Going through a dark time. A bardo
state. Nirvanic doubt.
The new moon no brighter than the last
eclipse.
I hear the disembodied thunder of my
amplified heart
making its way toward me like an
enlightened storm front.
I’ve always chosen the hardest
teachers to ignore
and where the road divides, I’ve gone
both ways at once
just to give my earthbound guides a
chance of a wishbone
to find their way back on their own by
following
the choices they made to get here like
an avalanche.
I’m as effortless about my despair as
I am about bliss.
I treat them both as if they were none
of my business.
The birds and apples come to this
rootless tree
of their own accord and the tree does
not protest
the unleaving of an earthly excellence
that blossomed awhile in the human
heart and was gone.
A windfall of loss. The dead flower
frosted with winter stars
in a dream where the waterclocks are
frozen in time
and this is perfect and that is perfect
and if you take
perfect from perfect, it’s still as
perfect as it was then
and as it is now and shall be tomorrow.
I watch the moonrise without breathless
aspirations.
I observe the sunset without lingering
disappointments.
What I have received in joy, I will not
deceive in sorrow.
PATRICK WHITE
