These Huge Vast Thoughts Of You Poem by Patrick White

These huge vast thoughts of you
prove nothing
except they're too hard to carry.
They're the same old Sisyphean stones
I've been rolling uphill
ever since you left me
standing on quicksand
like a half-finished pyramid
that just lost its reason for dying.
And I'm way past crying.
I'm dark water locked in the heart
of a distant planet
that doesn't support life.
I look up at the nightsky now
remembering you as you were then
and I'm always one house shy of a zodiac.
There.
At the end.
There's a space
where that last sign of you
used to be
and a galactic black hole
that keeps sucking me in
like a bird into a jet engine
to try and see in the dark
if there's a way out of here
I haven't tried before.
I've followed my footprints
like scars in the deserts of Mars.
Using my direction of prayer for a compass
I've been an undercover boyscout
looking for signs of life on Venus.
Now there are too many event horizons between us
too many bent dimensions
too many worlds
too many millions of lightyears away
too many swords and bells
too many full moons
crossed out on the calendar
like Xs on boarded up plague doors
for longing to bridge the gaps
in the unimaginable vastness of space
by jumping from one constellation to the next
like an ancient collection of starmaps
looking for one that shines
as you once did
when things that were hidden
deep in the heart of the night
were revealed
without resorting to signs.
I've never stopped missing you
though it would be good advice
in sensible shoes
if I could.
And it's not out of respect for the dead
that the wound never heals
that parted us like the Red Sea
but more the way love feels
when it's leaving Egypt
for a promised land
it's not allowed to enter.
Which one of us was the cause?
Which one of us was the effect?
How could anyone answer that
when I remember looking at you
through the doorway into your studio
reworking your canvas
over and over again
late into the night
and I used to think
as you mixed your colours like instincts
even our flaws are perfect
when our eyes are a work of love.