I Wish I Knew You Well Enough To Say
Trying to get centered in the middle of chaos
isn't going to turn me into the third of eye
of a hurricane rose, or square the circle
with the clarity of a lens with a seeing-eye dog.
The rags of the clouds are teaching the dandelion seeds
how to drift with a good conscience,
just let things go awhile. What's done, what's not.
Why labour at either when together they're just
the human way of walking away from things
one moment after another? Chaos has a way
of conditioning itself into people like me
who relax because they know it's all out of control.
Been feeling like a dead branch, a maple witching wand,
these past few days, because I've given up
divining water with a snake's tongue,
and I thought I was blossoming again
when I saw the first bud of the moonrise
but now it seems to have gone down
behind a screening myth of eyelashes and trees
and my heart is so disappointed in me
there's no help for it, it's crying in my bloodstream,
and when all my childhood insecurities
come mocking me like a fox in my sacred hole,
I don't even bother licking my wounds anymore.
Hope. But it's dogpaddling just beneath an airhole
in the middle of a seal hunt on a bloody ice floe
that's grinding its molars in its sleep like sheet ice.
Always hope. A crack in the door left ajar
for the light to get in and the darkness out.
Only a fool would make the exceptional a rule of thumb,
and hope is a palace of water with so many windows
even the best thieves of moonlight
don't know whether they're breaking in or out.
Just the same, my blessings on everyone's head and house.
The wingspans of two birds hinged to a gate
that doesn't need a guru to teach it to open,
where I'm a stranger who stopped to talk
on the roadside of the fence, and on the other,
I'm a nocturnal wildflower in a secret garden of bliss
that doesn't notice the difference in the way I bloom.
Anyway, who's got the eyes to see any further
into their fate than a pair of dice do, and if things
don't break your way, you're not washed up
on Circe's island like a love affair with the moon,
the manuscript of your first loveletter doesn't
regrettably meet anyone's needs at the time
but feel free to submit again if you're a masochist,
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
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