Patrick White Poems

Not imitating anything within myself. Not
cloning, replicating, or even confining
the same seeds to the same plants, endlessly
spiralling through space like a galaxy or a hawk,
...

Going through a dark time. Antares, the red ant,
the bitter berry in the heart of Scorpio. Why not
blame it on the stars? How could they deny it?
Living penumbrally in the eclipse of a celestial body.
...

Demonic spirit among the numb,
you here with me again, fire, familiar,
looking for someone among the dead as I am,
blue cyanotic corpse, skull-harp, anyone
...

A haze of dust on the windows at dusk,
cataracts glowing in the epiphanous sun
that leaves the night coming on like a door ajar
for the light to get out on its own like a cat.
...

Humbled on earth, exalted by a star,
I say nothing and wait for the echo.
It's bad with me tonight, more than I can bear.
I'm in isolation, but I don't know where.
...

Things I must say to you the crystal said.
Jewels I must turn in the light.
Things I have gathered
like wild herbs from the starfields
...

O this morning more than ever
I want to disappear into my life
like a bird into the blue oblivion
of a migration of one
...

I would miss you if you weren't so deep inside.
I would send the fireflies out like a search party
to beat the bushes and the stumps to see where you hide
were you not the stars within that lead me home.
...

SISTER LUNACY

Shall we dance, shall we spin and wheel, hesitate, advance,
stall and recover, whirl like maple keys, and blow
...

However gratified I am, always I'm left with a hunger
for something more than I've tasted before
as if my emptiness were not perfect yet and I were
ready to let everything ride on a single throw of my skull
...