Patrick White Poems

I gently took the strawberry heart
of the bird with the broken neck
and buried it in a shrine of leaves and grass.
And in a low voice, whispered a blessing.
...

Stranger in the leaving
than you were before you came.
Is it not always so
when people separate?
...

Every path is as wide with compassion
as the planet that you're walking on
so there's really never any danger of falling off.
I didn't lie
...

Ever since I became a poet
my whole life is an open wound
I've been bleeding out of
like a ribbon on a gift addressed to everyone.
...

The angel in the way I'm wrestling with
won't box. I don't get a choice of weapons.
My hip dislocated by a greater intensity than I am,
I'll walk away the stronger man,
...

For all the seers and seekers out there,
all you bright seeds on a blind wind
looking for a vision of life you can root in
and express yourselves like willows in the moonlight
...

The world is only as big
as the size of the life going on in me.
If I wanted to take the full measure of the sky
what could that be
...

The night in the wounded mirror
is only a childhood away from my face
and there's always a shattered window
between me and my starless shining,
...

The only way to control things is with an open hand.
Water on rock
a fist can't do anything to stop the rain
that keeps washing its bloody knuckles
...

You were the singularity at the bottom of the blackhole
where all the light and life and love and money went.
You were an abyss that just couldn't stand being empty.
You wanted to be a fat void in the midst of plenty.
...