How Rare That Anyone
How rare that anyone prefers the real,
fire that can drown, water that burns;
the whole of the night sky
form-fitted to your face like a skin
of translucent cellophane
that takes your breath away.
My heart marches like a little drum in a vast darkness
toward a war
it is important not to win.
The stars are strewn like white sweet clover
along the roads of brave men in masks,
but the true holy wars are faceless
and the martyrs always die alone
like leaves without names,
like a species that went extinct
before it was discovered
to be the only known antidote
to terminal literalism.
Follow your thoughts far enough into delusion
and they'll fray like ropes,
like the deltas of ancient rivers,
like the burning bushes of evolution
under the mammary bell-curves
of thermophilic bacteria,
the voice of God, denuded of its mystery,
the magmatic venting
of a deep sea fumarole.
The fools enthrone themselves like rivers
in a palace of salt in a desert
that withers like lightning in the root,
but the wise know they play with their lives
long into the late afternoon
like toys that don't belong to them
and will be taken back
by the lengthening hands of the shadows
that approach us like slow dreams.
And what's the body if not
a bag-pipe full of water
leaking out of itself like the highland lament
of a widow in the rain?
Flesh rises and falls
like the curtain on a bad play
as one by one time ushers
friends, lovers, family out of the audience
until not even the echoes are listening.
Most die like the understudies of stars
that never made an appearance;
darkness falling like the eyelid of a stage
booked for a dress rehearsal of ghosts.
We're the flame of a little flower
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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