Patrick White Poems

The lightning a salvo of flashbulbs
across the bow
of an unknown celebrity.
The windows have an honest look
...

You can't embrace me with your moderate love
as if two arms were one too many to give someone a hug,
or one eye were enough to look at the stars in your lover's eyes,
and make up constellations you've never seen before.
...

This is an old sorrow, almost beautiful in the way
it underwhelms me from above, a sky caving in
like a circus tent under the weight of the rain,
a ghost of fruit that could not bear the weight of its tears.
...

My life the wardrobe of a shabby star; here,
take this carnelian pomegranate
that has hardened into a heart
and appease what blood you can, take my tongue
...

On the wolfpath around the lake,
a narrow-eyed moon keeping an eye
on my intrusive solitude, my equivocating silence.
I can feel the air saturated with wet noses.
...

Alone with my obvious crowns
dishevelled as blackberries, each of their black tines
a thorn trying to write a love-letter in tiny eyes of blood,
I despise the masks that whisper in the ashes
...

It's a gesture of the heart
that no one can explain
that lays its words down like cool herbs
gathered on the moon
...

The serpent sits enthroned
at the top of its own stairwell,
helically reposing in its own empyrean
like an August hawk
...

The earth a message in a blue bottle
someone threw into a desert of stars
for help,
I'm stranded on the island
...

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,
...