Patrick White Poems

The object of our devotion
finally asks from us
the very eyes that dazzled us into obedience,
and leads us like a wind,
...

I turn out the lights and lie down to sleep
and you open up within me like a lotus of fire
blooming in the darkness of a vast inner space
that has become my only skin, tattooed with stars
...

I woke up saying your name
but in the course of the day forgot.
I should have forgiven you sooner
but my tongue was a noose and a knot.
...

Sweet one, sapphire lapwing, killdeer, comet;
how haven’t I seen you in everything, casino stars,
the high fires on the mountain that bloom in the snow,
and the tangerine daylilies like the tents of the street lamps
...

My secret place down by the Tay River.
I deer-bed down among the autumn grasses
and last of the New England asters
half-lotus in cowboy boots
...

I have never said to anyone that I loved them
and not meant stars, not meant soft green lanterns, not
meant the light coming out of the dark
and fireflies on a windy summer night by a black lake
...

I miss you like a burn victim misses his face, misses the sky he used to wear like skin. I think I'm dying tonight; Friday night, wandering from unfinished room to unfinished room, trying on coffins, looking at death in the shedding mirrors, wondering what my life has amounted to, a raindropp in the desert,
...

The long, dark night, more anthracite
than bituminous. And one star, alone,
fierce above the town, burning, as a jetliner
blinks its way down to landing in Ottawa.
...

Soft liberation going on underground
as if someone left the gate to my heart open
and the horses are grazing in sidereal pastures
and there’s no turmoil in the wind blowing
...

My words taste of the flavours of the lives I’ve lived.
I cauterize my wounds on the stars. Runes, cuneiform,
scars, I’ve even found a way to use spiderwebs
like the fridge magnets of an exoteric alphabet.
...