The Tragic Bliss
The tragic bliss of having loved you
like a lost generation.
The farcical sorrow
of the one that was found
like the other shoe
of a crystal slipper that didn't fit.
What was lost?
What was recovered?
Nothing's lost until it asks where it's going.
I was in love with the knower.
But you loved the knowing.
Everything was as it was.
Only the perishable growing.
Only the stars to clarify
the misgivings of oblivion.
Only you telling me
like a leftover voice in my head
that's been gathering dust in the attic
it's one thing to do what you want to do
it's another to do what you must.
It was only then
that I really understood your helplessness.
How weak you were.
How deeply enslaved you were
to adding a new link every day
to lengthen your chains
as a way of earning your freedom.
How far down the road did you get?
I haven't gone anywhere since.
I let things come to me
so nothing's ever the same anyway
whether I stay or go.
It's still the same river
you can't step into twice.
It's still the same mindstream
watching the world flow by
like a starmap of fireflies high overhead.
I've got wounds that never wear the same scars twice
and get hurt worse
when they realize how rare it is
that a young scar ever listens to an old wound's advice.
I watch the moon slash her wrists over and over again
on her first and last crescents
and the shadows bleed out of me
across the seabeds of dead oceans
where the bride of suicides
trails her gown of seafoam
on the tides of adolescents
that never made it to shore.
I could never see life as intolerable
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poem by Patrick White
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