Patrick White Poems

Are you born yet, you who will understand this
when I have receded like a wave into the foam
of oncoming stars, no more than a cachet
of this remote flowering in the darkness,
...

NIGHT OF PEACE

Night of peace in the midst of trouble, of heavy stones
longing for lighter hearts, and cherries swelling like stars
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My eyes have turned into clouds on the moon
too proud to cry
and my tongue is a leaf on the wind
and this may be my last voice, everything said
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It’s not mad to ask directions from the lightning
and these clouds and roads of unknowing
that unravel like threads of blood
in the refutable hands of time, not mad
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And there are people with glass blood and chalk hearts
who ask you to believe that razorwire is a grape vine,
and the moon nothing but a cold stone, half-people
in stolen straitjackets with secret agendas of blackflies
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You don’t need to tell me you don’t care, not caring
is an environmental condition since humans became
too dangerous to trust their own minds as the world,
let themselves be morning doves in the phoenix-fire of the sumac,
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If almost any leaf will do to prove
the autumn is a flying carpet, then why should you doubt
my heart is a chainsaw buried on the moon with honours
after the last tree was felled, or the sun is the ultimate dumpster
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for Alysia

Are you sad, mauled like a morning web
by the shadows of things that were said
to make the candle sorry
it couldn’t shine on alone,
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In a journal of blood that doesn’t exaggerate my breath
to the mythic proportions of distant nebulae,
I have tried to record my nights on earth
as an apostate astronomer with a two way telescope
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Wolves out tonight.
The smart dogs are stay-at-homes.
No berries. The bears have torn up
the garbage dumps and heaped
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