A Haze Of Dust On The Windowpanes
A haze of dust on the windows at dusk,
cataracts glowing in the epiphanous sun
that leaves the night coming on like a door ajar
for the light to get out on its own like a cat.
And the next moment all the eyes
that were on the road to Damascus
blinded by a revelation are returned
from the darkness of their clarity
to their normal muddy mundane vision
and I can see the birch groves from here
upping their quota of white canes on the nightshift.
And isn't it strange how things emerge
from one mindscape into the next
like a serpent shedding its skin
like a sky it's been consulting about wings,
or the effortless birth sacs of the dragons
who have made the same transition
from the lowest of things to the highest
like a flying doctor bearing true north?
Polaris and Draco wrapped around
the tilted axis of the earth as if it were
the sign of a caduceus in the hand of a messenger
that says night is the best time to heal
and leaves us to the moonlit herb gardens
we planted in the spring of our dreams
when wild crocuses where just beginning
to poke their innocent noses through the snow?
Now the dark when the magicians come out
and the bats and the stars, and the fairies
are enthroned on their mushrooms and sacred stones
and retinal responses to reality
turn visionary in their pursuit
of an earthly excellence of their own
that doesn't belittle them again
as the gods and goddesses of a world of their own.
And me, I'm sitting here alone
wondering if I do empty myself of myself
so perfectly there's no one left to tell me
I've finally become no one fit enough
to lift the veils of Isis without expecting
to find just another starmap in hiding.
Or if I've rinsed myself clean enough of myself
to be washed from her eyes in tears
that fall like mirrors of mercury
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poem by Patrick White
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