Patrick White Poems

AND I WANT TO CRY OUT

And I want to cry out, unburden the bell of my pain,
release the shadow this storm has been walking for years
...

Down by the river again
listening for stars to interrupt my solitude
like the first little nicks of rain to strike a windowpane,
I realize how much I prefer a magnanimous liar
...

for Louise and Morgan

Dangerous to love things that perish
but cowardly not to.
You weren't just a cat.
...

Let me be worthy of the river
and the strange ores that glow at night,
buried like teachers in the mountain;
let my blood always taste of the moon
...

I can remember you screaming
like a shattered crack house window
something obscene to the last john on death row
you railed like a comet in passing.
...

Heal softly, lover, burn gently,
the moon is full on your windowsill,
and the stars haven't gone down
over the eyes of your bells
...

My hands were once the afterlives of birds
that caressed the cheeks of the sky
and brushed back the wind from its eyes,
and took a finger to intercede with a tear
...

Even when the road is missing
like the absence of God, or a woman I love,
I praise that emptiness for the freedom it accords me
to create a way of my own like a river of stars
...

I've gone somewhere
wherever this is,
and I don't know how
the roads I knotted to mark the way back
...

Wired to looking for Gardens of Eden at the wrong end of my dopamines.
Want to move back to the country
and live in a secluded place
you couldn't find unless I led you there.
...