Patrick White Poems

No muse around, I sit down by the side of the road
and let my solitude inspire me, insights
flashing like unnameable night birds
across the occult intuition of the moon.
...

Pure intensity. The point of a star. Blue acetylene
to burn out the slag of the soul and burnish the gold
that pours from the ore like the full moon out of the new
without any fear of ever growing old.
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Mostly sad. Long dolorous drops of molten bells
tired of calling the faithful to prayer
and the cannon getting all of the attention.
No particular beef with life and only a few in it.
...

Looking for a little black water after the fury of the white.
Dark energy after the light as peace
settles down gently upon me,
the sediment of the eras and rivers of my life.
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A little thought in a big space, I'm falling
through my own immensities here at my desk,
one of my Icarian propensities for plunging into things.
My voice intimidated by the violence of the silence within.
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Won't meet most of you in a lifetime
and know there are six billion of us
and more coming all the time, each trying
to interpret the sign of their own star,
...

Just before dawn Venus in Leo between the moon and the Beehive Nebula.
The chimney of the old shoe factory reflected
like a toppled obsidian obelisk in the Tay River.
Couldn't sleep. Now I'm heading home with the bats and the ghosts.
...

You can aim your shining but better to burn like a star.
A calm continuous explosion. Just like the Big Bang
before dark energy entered the scene
and things started to get interesting
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While the ghosts are putting make-up on their death masks in the green room
and looking for their false eyelashes like centipedes on the floor,
I'm out on stage apologizing for a power outage of the stars
that shouldn't be blamed on the windmills everybody's tilting at.
...

The light doesn't talk to the flowers anymore
the way it used to. I can feel a lot of shadows touching my face
as if it were written in braille. Acid in the rain.
Tears of dry ice in the housewell. Weathervanes
...