Patronym
And relieved to be vast again, stepping through the backdoor
of the murdered house where I left my heart
inscribed on the studio floor
in a rosary of chalk, martyr to a rage of freedom,
I fathered a gentle nation in the eyes of bellicose stars
humbled by the failures of the wise.
Venus in Virgo and eras of birds in the trees, my blood
proclaimed propitious omens of a thriving solitude
to the knife of light that candled in my hand.
The ghosts of dead wolves padded through me like a pulse
and as far as the night could see into the blind water
of the flowing clock that aged like the moon
on a pilgrimage of tears, I was saved by the bleeding bell
of my own sorrow, a lifeboat in the desert,
the colossus of the sky bridge in my brain
that spanned two hemispheres with owls of inquisitive light.
And though I’ve agreed to disagree with fate
and account my eloquent wounds
the restless graves of dark angels buried in sacred mirrors,
there’s no point in desecrating the obvious,
I enflamed the insurrection of lost keys
that clamoured for sanctuary at the cemetery gate
with radical slogans of bones and ultimatums of flesh
demanding passion or death for the squalls of sparrows
that kept arriving like refugees, relics of the true cross.
And I have been liberated by so many things,
science, art, religion, history, politics and love,
struggled and died in the name of so many opening doors
that every thought is a transgression of thresholds,
every morning, one link less of the chain,
the victorious entrance of rebel birds into an abandoned capital.
I’ve lost count of the nights, furious with stars
that have overthrown the masters of precision,
and the soft blue skies charmed by the eyes of elegant women
that have run up my spine like makeshift flags
they’ve suppled from their urgent blood,
everyone a comet, an evangel of leaves, fire-bloom
on the dead branch of long, imperial winters.
How could I not be grateful
to the underground cabals of the rising spring
that has purged my house of fanatics and spies
who watched me out of the corner of their eyes
with the cunning of shattered windows? All praise
to the uprising of the wind and the revolutionary rain
and the sun that comes beaming like a general
dressed in his workday shadows without his medals on
in a coup of transcendent water that has moved my roots to light.
And in the night, when I drink and laugh with the stars,
among philosophers and mystic poets stashed away like wines
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poem by Patrick White
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