My Heart Almost Dead
My heart almost dead, a mansion of ashes and ghosts,
a museum of ancient eclipses and supernovas,
the bones of old lovers hanging like wind chimes
in a shadowless forest of charred trees
waiting for mystical rain when the wind wakes up
and spreads its rumour of regeneration.
Love before and love after; even when they hear the music
no one dances. There are no colours in their eyes,
fixed as fired glass, and their tears fall
like lethal riddles on the nervous breakdown of the sphinx.
And it's all so sad and okay they're gone
or were never here, or stayed awhile
and passed on like a pilgrim in a dream
to a distant shrine where they could play the goddess.
Who isn't the god of their own hovel
sweeping dead stars from the sills of their lies like winter flies?
Somewhere deep in space without and within
the light is two guitars at right angles
trying to play with one hand in harmony. And that's okay, too,
but I'm bored with reading these well-thumbed books of pain
in isolated lighthouses mourning like widows in the rain.
There's nothing much in the salvage of phantom ships
that makes me want to run down to the shore anymore
and look for survivors. Why shine or warn
when everyone runs aground on the rocks like abandoned arks?
There are dead elephants among the starfish in the tides,
tigers of salt lifeless in the brine, drunk prophets
giving their flesh to the crabs and grazing fish
like wafers of communion served by lifeless dolls,
whole worlds in embryo, dead treble-clefs
and riderless sea-horses. Why turn your heart into a church
for a congregation of coroners; why turn the wine
into embalming fluid and call it holy blood
and pretend it's salvation
when the bell is already wounded
by a kiss of black lightning
that wanted to cut the judas-goat down from its rope?
The jackals of prayer are out hunting the motherless lamb
with the golden fleece; every leaf hears the scream
and shudders into a sanctuary of hidden roots, safe for the night;
every eye signs the averted glimpse
of sudden blood on the moon
and denies its own work three times at the crowing of the cock
like the founding quicksand of a compromised religion.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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