There Are Masks
There are masks I will not wear,
backstage wardrobes I won't dress up in,
lives someone else can star in,
fires that will never feather my voice,
or sweep the shadows
from my palace of ice and eyes,
faces that will never hang like fruit
from any bough of my being,
daggers I won't bury in the wounds
they inflicted like mouths
the tongue has been cut out of,
dignities of desire
that will not circle the roadkill,
my wings linked to the foodchain.
My heart will never labour
like the ox of a bell under a yoke,
though I plough the starfields;
nor will I fill its rivers
with leeches and eclipses
and let it sip the blood of others
to nourish my own lust.
I will not smudge the clarity of my heat
with greenwood, not sacrifice
the hawk's eye for the ant's,
cloud the integrity of love with acrid reason.
I will not eat the days
like spoonfuls of my own ashes,
a martyr to my own orthodoxies,
trying to be true to a creed of fire
that moves underground like a root-fire
in a choir of cedars, the forbidden flame
smouldering, trying to bite its own tail,
trying to put itself out with its own tears
for the best of reasons,
for lost earrings in a coffin.
Anyone can see
you're a raven worthy of silver
who's roofing her wings with tin,
an urgent orchid with flare
trying to bloom in the shadow
of a nightshift toy factory.
Your wingspan
should be measured in horizons
from dawn to dusk; and you
free to ride your own thermals,
to slide yourself like a theshold or a love-letter
under the door of the wind,
to take the hood off your sky
and explore your own vastness,
all the bridges you built
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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