Are You Sad
for Alysia
Are you sad, mauled like a morning web
by the shadows of things that were said
to make the candle sorry
it couldn’t shine on alone,
the ray of its affection
lavish with the light of a life
that isn’t a star in a vault of bone?
Strangers in the doorway,
love-letters without a home
that knock like footprints in a blizzard
to marrow the telephone
that no one ever answered
with a voice as raw as gold,
are you sad, are you cold,
is there a dolphin and a wound
between the spaces of the secrets
that mend their nets on the moon?
Oceans in the rose of night,
and poppies in the starfields
that burn like distant nebulae
with all the radiant reasons why
the heart is a better swimmer
than a lie with exits of its own
and when we cry it’s always summer
and keys on a chain in the grass
that fall like cherries and chance.
Are you sad, is there a silence
in the eye of the storm that advances
like a bird that is new to the distance
between the green boughs and the dead,
and bells that kneel in a watershed
to appeal the lightning’s chandeliers,
the roots of an unknown flower
or a sword with a severed head?
Are you sad, alone with the alone;
is there a coast on the verge of tears,
and someone bleeding the starfish
and a ghost on a borrowed throne?
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
