And Love Caught By The Gills
And love caught by the gills
in the mesh of human need,
and the storm outside
a leaden drummer sick of war,
and flesh and rock the same,
and the eye no more than water,
and mud no less than the spirit,
and the heart
in the hollow of its own hands,
a lifeboat that failed,
an attempt that floundered,
a rescue that failed,
and everything beyond right and wrong,
no river mapping itself,
every direction,
the thorn of a rose,
the fang of a coiled compass,
the black toxicity of depleted stars,
and no one to surrender to,
no victor, no victim, no vanguished,
everything the metaphysics
of sand and salt,
dead leaves and brittle seaweed,
lost bolts to crucial connections,
a graveyard of windows,
and every step forward
a return to what was never left,
a knot that grows
by doubling back on itself
until it's stopped by the eye of the needle,
and the only thing left to burn,
this bouquet of unanswered love-letters,
the rain comes down steady
on the yellow leaves through the milky windows
and the sky is a mass of ashes.
And I concede
there are jewels on the vines of the fire,
and not all razorblades
mistake themselves
for eyelids and supple petals,
and there are fingertips
that haven't been dipped in acid,
and sometimes the robin mauled by the cat
gets away with the worm
to fill the satchels of its young,
and that everything that is
must in some way
be confounded by its own intelligence,
even the atoms somehow separate from everything,
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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