Patrick White Poems

Don't let your bones be softened by fear.
By the time you hear it the lightning has already struck.
Don't listen for the echoes of things you haven't said.
And stop breaking your fortune-cookie skull open
...

Does the eye of the rain know it's a tear?
Does that ray of light know
that even at night
it's a revolutionary among flowers?
...

Childhood's never over.
It goes on evolving along with us
as if maturing had nothing to do
with growing up.
...

Empty-handed I come; empty-handed I go.
The road has no name.
The destination doesn't exist yet.
By my side, no one. Little bird, you want to drink
...

When lightning fries your hard drive
and you're trying to weave a flying carpet
out of snakey wavelengths that took
millions of light years before you were born
...

These late night sessions with myself
that crowd the world out
to make room for me to be alone
delinquently with myself
...

The nightwind is dancing with the leafless trees
under a new moon
as if they were crutches
that couldn't keep up with its moves.
...

I stand where the listening begins
as if my voice were just another one of the echoes
and my tongue were the tip of an edgy precipice
that doesn't dare make a move
...

Gray rain
but the trees
are teaching the stars how to break into leaves.
Good rain on the good earth.
...

Great sex in a bower of razorwire
and every kiss the splash
of an electrical rose
that just fell into the jacuzzi
...