Patrick White Poems

In the nameless realms of my mindlessness
where everything that could be said
has been spoken
without being understood
...

What a shadow walks in the aftermath of realization;
I don't want to know what I know,
I don't want to sing what I sing
to the harp of the sagging powerlines
...

First the tenderness; I feel the tenderness,
the downy edge of the leaf, the eyelash,
the green tooth of the leaf
gently opening its mouth to the air,
...

O my mother, O my father,
I stand at this Y in the road,
the hybrid son of an angel and a demon,
two halves of the same chromosome
...

I'm a savage mystic with chameleonic passions.
Serpent fire with meteoritic nano-diamonds for eyes.
The black slash of the wounded crescent of the new moon
bleeding to death like a thorn among the willows
...

Sitting in the dark
being who I am by acclamation.
The solitude half memory, half exorcism.
No one else ran for the position
...

Enlightenment isn't lumpy
even if sometimes you've got your heart
stuck in your throat
like a bird in a chimney
...

Your intensities dissipating in the silence
that follows your urgent avowals,
it hurts to be subjected to oblivion
like a burnt out streetlamp in a city of light,
...

Gnats in the sunset,
drunk on the light,
women like comets and vapour trails everywhere
flaring across a skullful of sky
...

Things might be drifting away
like an empty lifeboat
with nothing left to save
but the memory of moonlight
...