On Into The Next Dimension Poem by Patrick White

On into the next dimension
like a measure of thought
sitting full lotus
on a flying carpet of feeling
that's on the same wavelength as the stars.
I've been an intimate of windows long enough.
I trust them.
But they don't shine.
They're confined to the news
of what's going on beyond them
that's brought to them live
by skies they flip through
like old Time magazines in a doctor's office.
Their eyes are long on views
but shy on visions.
Cataracts in the eye.
Flowers in the sky.
If you look through them long enough
you'll kill all the wildflowers
in your field of vision
and your third eye
will start grinding lenses for a living
like Spinoza
for a spiritual telescope with myopia.
Clarity will start writing messages in your breath
you're meant to take to heart
as you watch the universe shrinking
like expiry dates on the hot gusts of stars
evaporating like ghosts
from the cold glassy stares
of windowpanes
that have been crying in secret for years
because they're not taken as seriously as mirrors.
It takes a rock of a will
and the passion of an angry delinquent
to break free of them
but once they're broken
like the link of a koan
that liberated you from your own thought-chains
you can still see the whole in every piece
of the primordial atom
that precipitated the Big Bang
but it doesn't get in the way of what's beyond it.
You stop lifting fingerprints
as evidence that you exist
and start lifting veils
begin shedding skins
stop asking sacred clowns
if they can still recognize you
under all the facepaint
you use to express your emotions.
You let your masks blossom and blow away
like Ezra Pound's images
of faces on a wet black bough of the subway.
You empty your streets
like a dangerous part of New York
and step out of the doorway
where you've been waiting for yourself
to return home.
You exchange the key to the lock
for a fork you can fly from a kite
like a lightning rod in an electrical storm
that sends the snake pit of serpent fire
that moved like a glacier in a dream of thawing
racing up your spine
like a dragon of life
urgent as spring rain
that sheds its scales
like waves and ripples of water
but wakes up feathered in flames.
And this time it's the sun that drowns
for flying too close to Icarus
like the event horizon of a black hole
that smears its dimensions
like peanut butter
around the rim of a subliminal halo.
Free of the past
whatever you see
confirms your secret intuition
that the world hasn't happened yet.
That everything you see
in the ubiquitous solitude
of your unwitnessed sentience
is merely prelude
to a greater event
that transcends
the inconceivability
of what's self-evident about the present.