Patrick White Poems

The blonde shock of wild sea grass from New Brunswick.
At first I thought it was your hair.
And tiny beads of iridescent peacock seeds
as small as the myriad hopes of a poppy
...

You keep looking for meaning in a world
you say hasn't given you one
worth living for
and you're down and disappointed
...

My heart said yes to everything my mind denied.
Certain women, poetry, doorways, cosmic risks,
a few back country roads that knew enough not
to ask me where I was going that late at night.
...

Answering the wolf.
Its agony, my own.
Its long howl of irreproachable pain
enough to silence the mountains
...

It's stranger to conceive of me as I am
than to imagine that I'm someone else.
There's more largesse in the early spring air.
You can tell by the tears that well up in their eyes
...

I left your image of me shining
just where you wanted it
in that glass menagerie
of broken mirrors
...

Chewing on memories like broken mirrors in her sleep
tears of blood run from her eyes.
She doesn't know I'm watching
but I've got windows everywhere.
...

I remember loving you.
You turned my heart into a koan I haven't cracked yet.
You were a muse of dark matter.
A Mayan phase of the moon
...

Too long in these depths, sullen and sublime.
So dark you've got to be the light
if you want to find your own way around.
No moon. No colour. No star. No sign.
...

And you shall forever be
all that could not be said of me
though I spoke for myself as long as I could
to answer your absence in paint and words
...