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It Isn't That I'm Looking

It isn't that I'm looking for eagles in a barnyard
or a phoenix in a match-head
when I observe
by the number of wrecks on the rocks
how few lighthouses there are these days
among so many flashlights.

What can the hair say about the horn
or the feather teach the wind
or quicksand preach
for the edification of the cornerstone?

And must I put a healthy leg
at the service of a broken crutch
to limp along with the mob
at the end of a dying culture
that insists that all roads end
in a cult of cripples?

If I'm walking alone to the stars

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poem by Patrick White
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The Reluctant Visitor

The Reverend Peter Porter Guys
Was a gentle man with anaemic eyes,
Pale blue, that watered wherever he went
From Epiphany, to the fasting of Lent.

He walked the villages of his flock
From door to door, from knock to knock,
And always he mentioned the Organ Fund
To the full of life, and the moribund.

He went from house to house with glee
Consuming hundreds of cups of tea,
And never noticed - and there's the rub,
That 'hubby' had gone to hide at the pub.

The ladies listened with wringing hands
To the trials of Job and the Lord's commands,
And simpered long in the hopes that he
Could give them a personal 'Heaven' key.

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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You're Not Mad Enough

You’re not mad enough to understand my poetry.
Suffering hasn’t twisted you into strange shapes
like a hangman’s apprentice
practising knots with your spine
or driven your innocence out into the desert
like a scape-goat for the sins of others
until you had mastered their evil
and become a great devil
condemned to do good
as if it were the most exquisite torment
of the damned.
You’ve never stood like an exile
at a sleepless window
and listened to the night rain
speaking in a foreign language.
Your electrons have never
been bumped out of their orbitals
like the photonic refugees
of a radioactive element
with half an afterlife

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poem by Patrick White
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The Day An Empty Envelope

The day an empty envelope, the clouds
islands of their own in a slow wind,
gathering out of nothing, going anywhere
the blue conception of the dispersing sky urges
above the green, summer turmoil of the trees.
I wake up wondering if love is just a word
or a whisper of smoke from distant mountains
or a tuberous begonia someone tore up last night
in their madness to dramatize their exit out of ecstasy,
their roses, scalded lobsters, their heart
torn like a soggy dawn in the pincers of the moon.

And I have been here before at the end
of these long wharves pillared in departure,
standing firmly fixed in the tides of sorrow,
saying goodbye to the sky and the sea
that have cried enough stars for the night
to remember its light is the taste of oblivion.
The air breathes you in like an anchor of mist
and all the words we released like vows

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poem by Patrick White
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I'm Flying Under The Light

I'm flying under the light to avoid detection.
There. That's the first line. A cornerstone.
Maybe water, granite or quicksand
but the cosmic glain
is cracked open like a skull
to extract the message from the fortune-cookie.
The second line comes easier
though it hasn't come yet.
I'm waiting like a crematorium at the end of my cigarette.
Yes. Hot coffins for cool people.
Like it. Where's the rest?
A mirror looks into my face
and sees the enlightened folly of creation
is not the work of a clown.
Forgive the little arrogant flag of flame
I've been trying to raise
out of a nation of ashes
like an arsonist with noble aspirations.
I've looked up at too many stars over the years
not to see beyond my next breath

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poem by Patrick White
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If You Had Any Compassion For Yourself

If you had any compassion for yourself,
others wouldn't have to suffer for you
and the world wouldn't show you
such a sad, woeful, wounded face.
You wouldn't see the withering leaves
and petals of the rose in autumn
as merely the scar tissue of its thorns.
In winter, mend your severance.
In spring, attend to your joys.
Like fishing nets and snow fences.
Like delphiniums in a garden bed
that's beginning to bloom like a starmap.

And you know that stranger inside
that's always witnessing everything we do
like a perfectly clear mirror, even in dreams?
Take another look, you might be surprised
at whose face you see at a meeting of eyes.

It's important not to pass judgement on yourself

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poem by Patrick White
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Waiting For A Thunderstorm

Waiting for a thunderstorm
just me and the moon
and these deserted streets with their heritage lamps
and tungsten suns
swarming with frenzied insects
like the brain of the occasional crackhead
who's made a hoody of the night
and pulls it down tighter as he passes
wondering whether he should have asked me for a cigarette.
Lines from sad songs like lingering smoke
from distant fires
curl through my head
like the ghosts of roads I once walked
then break off like old shoelaces.
O and the faces
like blossoms from a tree
hidden deep in the night
suddenly crossing the moon
like birds with messages and destinations
not meant for me anymore.

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poem by Patrick White
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A Creed For The Desperate

Don't let your bones be softened by fear.
By the time you hear it the lightning has already struck.
Don't listen for the echoes of things you haven't said.
And stop breaking your fortune-cookie skull open
like an old prophetic head
that claims it's been to the dark side
without being dead.
Don't let disaster define you.
You're not the bouquet
of a second class vinegar
hovering over a first class wine.
No crisis ever comes with its own identity
until you give it yours.
Move calmly over your own waters
like clouds in the eye of a puddle.
Walk as if you were already
following your own funeral
and lost your way to the grave.
People make much of being
but seeing is enough

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poem by Patrick White
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The Western Light

The western light
comes right in through my windows
and glows in a golden haze on the dirty panes.
It slashs geometric shadows on my landscapes
like some mad abstractionist
who took them way too personally.
And all they said
was moon tree star light stone flower river sun
as if that were enough of a vocabulary
to say the whole of creation
quietly under your breath
like a secret that’s shared by everyone.
Guess I’m not enough of an ideologue
to comb the swamp for my own skeleton
like the ancestor of modern art.
I’ve gazed too long and hard
at the waterlilies in the Fall River
as if I were meditating on koans
that effortlessly open by themselves
not to waste my mind on anything

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poem by Patrick White
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Begin

Begin anywhere.
Topple fall jump stumble plunge
into the eyeless abyss
into the roadless homelessness
of not knowing where you're going
or who'll you'll be by the time you get there.
Slash your way through the stretched canvas
of a painted sky
like a rogue star
with the blood of Betelgeuse
dripping from your brush if you must
perform your own Caesarian
to get out of yourself like an egg
into the Big Abide Beyond
and stretch your wings from dusk till dawn.
Don't hover like a cloud over starmaps
trying to work out a flight plan
waiting for the weather to clear for take-off.
In an infinite universe such as this
wherever you are

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poem by Patrick White
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