Among The Skeletons Of The Sundials
Among the skeletons of the sundials
what deficits of time remain unlived, unfulfilled?
So much forfeited to what crowded it out.
And the more that was said, the more
fraudulent and incomplete what we wanted to sing.
Too many murmuring windows, too many
trashed doorways to the collusive shelters of the heart.
We saw the stars, and how few learned.
We went to war for reasons
that have forgotten us now
and though there were those
who sternly waited like iron gates
no one returned to their secret gardens
or the silence as they had left it.
I watched from an island as the sea flexed
into the muscle of my generation
to celebrate a dream that hasn't happened yet
and tear the veils off the multi-eyed spiders
and make them wince in a succession
of photo-op acid flashbacks
that stunted the weaving a moment or two.
It was what we could do, not what we did it for,
and the idealism of it all was merely
the afterthought of the alibi for the release
of so much sunamic energy that would sooner
walk on water in Jesus boots, than float
the way the usual bloated corpses did.
The earth shook and the bridges and cornerstones
sank into quicksand, and the black roses
of the La Brea tar pits swallowed their worms.
And then the profit margins of the corporations
went helical as a stairway to heaven
and heaven came down to earth, and money was made.
Love and understanding exploited
as natural human resources. Spiritual materialism.
Light My Fire became the enlightenment path to cars.
I was there. I still wear more scars than I do flowers.
And I can remember the day the sundials died
in aesthetic gardens of unconcern and though
I loved the colours and the creative efflorescence
of unconditioned minds here and there
who had avoided madness by an eyelash,
it was only our lack of years for a summer or two
that kept us from saying the word, pure, with filthy mouths.
Too early for the fountains to fester yet.
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poem by Patrick White
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