Patrick White Poems

Not quite dawn, night seeping out of the blue,
troubled sleep, no stars, and you, a week gone,
the whole universe applying its laws to your absence
which is the silence everything returns to like water.
...

I can’t say that my breath
isn’t the lengthening shadow
of a tree burning its leaves
like a candlabra in the sunset,
...

All that I could wish for you or anyone else
is more than I could attain for myself.
So far from home for so long
as if home were the alibi
...

Looking at stars from Spy Rock
on top of Foley Mountain,
Westport glowing like an alloy
of red algae and fireflies down below
...

I am a dragon,
but I’ve got cloudy teeth.
You are a vase among jars,
a feather among scales.
...

Dying young in autumn,
the ideal death of a flower or a star
whose beauty's still as obvious
as a door that's been left ajar at night.
...

Dancing with an old man under the moon
with nothing but your tattoos on,
as it rose over the treeline like a mushroom
and as beauty is to wisdom,
...

Are you trying to convince me
that kindness does no good?
That no good deed will go unpunished,
that I should do a good deed and duck,
...

Nameless tonight, not me, immensities
beyond my reach. The windows
thawing in the heat. Blue moon
above a junkyard of farm machinery.
...

Galactic darkness. Luna moths
drawn in by the zircon oases of
candles on the coffee-table
burning behind plate-glass
...