Lady Nightshade's Suicide Wasn't Vain Enough
Lady Nightshade’s suicide wasn’t vain enough.
She insisted on dying for the world.
She finally stepped through the black door.
She took all that splendour of mind and flesh
and instead of going supernova to make a statement
let it shrink down into
the single snowflake of a white dwarf
in a spring thaw.
She died as unobtrusively as a wild flower perishes.
Lady Nightshade died like a whisper in a hurricane of razorblades
a candle flame
a toy in the corner
that knows when it’s time to let the child go.
She knew her greatest claim to fame
was perpetual silence.
There are some eyes so clear and radiant
the light’s too shy to enter.
There are some mirrors
that have to turn their backs on you
to show you what you’re looking at.
Lady Nightshade died like a black mass at the eclipse of a water lily
and then blew out the flames
on a skeletal replica
of the extinct candelabra
she made of her fossil remains.
It was hard to keep up with the half-life of some of her lies
but she could tell time radioactively
like numbers on a watch that glow in the dark
while the rest of us had to rely on a water clock.
She could see things coming
from the asteroid’s point of view
and when you heard her speak
of what she thought it was you should seek
among all those invisible things
we make visible through our lives
even if you only had a rag of blood
snagged on a thorn of what’s left of a heart in your body
she made a deep and lasting impact.
You looked at her
and you knew the time of night
and the weather.
In her nuclear winter
you were either a species of delusion
that went extinct
or you changed the way she did
and she was a legend among chameleons.
She was a rainbow’s worst nightmare.
With her
you weren’t deep enough into anything
until you’d dug your own grave.
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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