Patrick White Poems

He kept saying to himself
it’s not that hard to know the truth.
The truth is what you see
when there’s no one else there
...

And the willows down by the banks of the Tay
whisper through their veils
like ladies of the lake
where autumn walks like fire on the water
...

And there is one voice among many,
one I remember as mine
among so many drops of rain, so many stars,
so many leaves, flames, feathers, flowers,
...

Were there stars in your hair that night?
I cannot remember,
so taken with your face
and the mystery and the silence and the sorrow
...

What I would say to you if you were near,
if this definitive namelessless that walks me down to the river
to add my tears to the flowing, to sit on my rock
and stare at my self in reverse on a throne of water
...

Crazy man dancing with fireflies.
Another one trying to shoot out the stars.
I hear the woman next door weeping again tonight.
I don't know what for.
...

After you leave, a bell
deeper than the sea strikes once
and my blood thinks it's a ghost of fire
and tries to evaporate; gusts
...

It doesn't matter who I am now among these white dragons of energy
sleeping all around me like hills of snow, longing for a heart
that hasn't been run through with a sword or fried
in the fires of its squandered passions. As I pass and passing is an art,
...

What I wanted to show you,
you will not see.
What I wanted to give you,
you will not receive.
...

And love caught by the gills
in the mesh of human need,
and the storm outside
a leaden drummer sick of war,
...