Humbled On Earth, Exalted By A Star
Humbled on earth, exalted by a star,
I say nothing and wait for the echo.
It's bad with me tonight, more than I can bear.
I'm in isolation, but I don't know where.
And there's a half moon apricot blossom
over the roof of a bookstore that swears
that it's a scar. Maybe so. But there you go.
Why blame your eyes for what they see?
Venus earlier tonight, that was the key
to a thousand doors of insight
without a threshold among them
to say how far the light had travelled
just to get to me. O, yes, no doubt, beauty,
and time-shares in eternity you can't forget
all that easily. Something sharp and cold
and romantically aloof, diffuse, smeared
like a name on a window someone signed
in their own breath, as the night cooled down
like a glorious life into a homely death.
Crazy-wisdom, but without a path.
I followed the river to a sacred syllable
of a single dropp of water on the tongue of a leaf.
Though my immutable present be the aftermath
of flowers after a funeral, a skull with a laurel wreath,
just because I steal fire, doesn't make me inflammable.
Slow and sad, among my myriad mirages
and heart-dwarfing immensities. What is this?
What is that? I keep asking myself
so I don't have to listen to my own answers
as if someone were here to explain them to me.
Trying to saddle a bubble on the moon
and rise to the surface like a seahorse
to see if I can ride off like Venus
into a sunset somewhere with atmosphere.
Is this a labyrinth? Is this a cul de sac?
I embody a silence deeper than death.
Forgive me, mother. Forgive me Apple laptop.
I didn't ask for this afterlife. It's the sum
of what I had left after I ransomed myself
from those who would have deprived me
of this tragicomedy with pastoral overtones
I'm living now like a whole new golden age
still in the ore, but reputed to be there,
though I don't hope for too much anymore.
And it's o.k o.k. o.k. o.k.
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poem by Patrick White
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