Softly, Softly, Now
Softly, softly, now; here there is no beneath or above, no hell
for miscreant flowers opening for the moon, no ghosts
who can’t find their way back to the grave. No one
is unacceptable in this place where even the dead dig
for the blue bones of heaven, cracking
them open like fortune-cookies
to taste the light gold of the marrow. This is the kingdom
of empty cups waiting to be filled
by the black wine of union that ripened
in the skull-shrines
of a thousand drunken buddhas
begging outside a brothel door
for the same holy candle to show them the way home. People
are seldom grateful for what they don’t know
and thought is only the dog of reality
if you can catch my drift in this back-alley
where I’m dancing with a gust of wind. How lightly
you step off my tongue into your veils and shadows
dropping your masks like petals all over the asphalt
until you can’t be seen. Is that freedom or death; do you
bathe in your grave or your heart
when you remember the sorrows you’ve buried like daggers
in the wounds that widowed you? Do you tremble
like a kite at the end of your own life-line
waiting to be found by the witching-wands of the lightning;
or have you forgotten your madness, the dark jewels
in which you took sanctuary for the night
like an orphan in her longing, the crazy wisdom
that put on the costume of a dead clown
and offered herself to the blind and humourless
like a chessboard? Do you still swim naked in sapphires, raise
gardens of fish on the moon, perform
open-heart surgery on paralyzed serpents
that wake up from the anaesthetic between your legs
like a spring thaw, believing they can walk and then
come crawling back, veteran amputees
demanding crutches? Wild moon on a lonely river, night-lotus,
flesh and stars, every moment of you is origin; why doubt
your own reflection in the mirror of my voice? I’m
not selling snake-oil on the midways of eternity, filling the sails
of a slave-ship and calling it the love-boat; this is not
a wardrobe of auroras I buy up cheap in Montreal
and hawk from the back of a truck in Sunday parking lots. If the words
dance, if the wind plays lightly in the leaves, if the fire sings
and the diamonds flow and the rain falls musically
like phantom fingers on the spotted touch-me-nots, should I impugn
the graces of perception that sing, unseen, in the deep woods
because they fly without a limp, praise without a stutter?
I see in whispers; I hear in glimpses. Nameless affinities rooted in silence
bloom in the saying and fall back into themselves,
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poem by Patrick White
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