Patrick White Poems

He doesn't really know what it all means,
but he gives it access to his heart, free-range of his mind.
Not expecting an answer to the mystery of life
because it isn't petty enough to have one,
...

Walking straight through the cobwebs of old emotions,
trying to get these straitjackets off me, these
brown starclusters that stick but never seem to shine.
Don't care if I'm in or out of my mind, enough's enough
...

Letting the stars from last night
settle in this morning's puddles
so I can see more clearly once
this turmoil of starmud precipitates out
...

What I would say to you if you were near,
if this definitive namelessness that walks me down to the river
to add my tears to the flowing, to sit on my rock
and stare at my self in reverse on a throne of water
...

More past in my brain as I get older than future,
intrusive memories like ghosts come seeking absolution
I still can't give them sincerely after all these years
of irrelevant tears evaporating through holes in the ozone.
...

Every insight, the Big Bang, and the thought that follows, a universe.
Every image that flashes across the moonscape like a silhouette
in reverse of the dark matter and starmud that surrounds it,
a black swan among the white when there's snow on the river.
...

Lady Menagerie's heart tinkles like glassware.
I think of the rain as a musical prodigy
but Lady Menagerie listens and hears
little chips out of her tears. We walk
...

Playing chess with mundanity to survive to write.
Evading destroyers disguised as Everyman
who hates what I do because he thinks he can't
and ignores it, forgetting I've been trained for oblivion
...

How strange to recall childhood as an aging man
as if nothing had changed for the last sixty years
you're watching yourself as a young boy
from a point of awareness somewhere in the air
...

And when you get what you want, is it what you dreamed?
Did the mirage live up to its reputation, did it exceed
your expectations or is there another award beyond this one?
O endlessly hungry one, pleonaxic emptiness, were you born
...