No Shelter For The Heart
No shelter for the heart, the wind
is a wound of torn birds.
Too long in the dark
the star blooms without eyes.
I break a vow of silence with my solitude
and poems materialize
like lifeboats on the moon
in a sea of shadows.
I light my last candle
and the darkness in the room
holds a black mass for what I've lost.
Sensitive as a window
the sky changes like a mood ring
and my muse is an albino chameleon in eclipse.
I keep an abacus of skulls
to remind me what year it is
but the hours go by
like pilgrims to their death
and I can't relate to this eternal view of things.
The ghosts are used to me by now.
I keep the spiderwebs at bay in the corners.
I teach those who died young the names of the stars.
I remain undiverted by death
as the lesser of two differences.
And what do I know of love
I wish I didn't when the longing returns
to come down like a hard rock from the mountain
into the valley like a rogue foundation stone?
My memories are all the first drafts
of lives I've scrapped like bad addictions.
I made a bad play
out of my encyclopedic sorrows
and closed it on opening night as a farce
and everyone on stage applauded for an encore.
Leave a gate open and I'll walk through it.
Otherwise I'm the stranger at the fence.
I'm passing by. I'm where the road
runs out into the wilderness
and I won't stop until I'm irrevocably lost.
I've decultified myself from my identity.
Even my own mind doesn't recognize me.
But I'm one of the sacred clowns of words.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
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