The Chaos Of My Unravelling Self
The chaos of my unravelling self, a snake pit
of dissonant wavelengths that yesterday the moon
wove into a flying carpet, and then undid again.
Or maybe I jumped. I don't recall.
Knowing isn't the same thing
as making sense of it all
as if you were rewiring a zodiac.
Sometimes it's wiser to know
a lot more about what you don't
than it is the little that you do.
More room for the stars.
The mystery doesn't feel so cramped.
If you're a river you've got no choice
but to trust the way things fall out
and when's the last time you heard a fire
asking for a starmap? A garden
might be a menu but most of the earth
bears what it will, and the clouds
don't ask the wind for directions.
Everything in existence is either
the will of a star or the whim of a flower.
Longing or enlightenment the same,
two sides of the same windowpane,
one floods the room with moonlight
and the other looks out in silence at it.
A good night is when you throw the moon through it.
No more distinction between outside and in.
The aviary sings differently when there's no cage
or your voice leaves the door open
for the birds to come and go.
Same with words, thoughts, emotions.
These are the waves of an oceanic universe
responding to its own weather.
Halcyon, the stars in its eyes,
or a holocaust of nautical widows
frozen in time like upstairs windows.
Whatever it is, God, light, life, love,
shape it how you will out of bone or obsidian,
out of the transparent medium of your spirit,
out of the tusks of the telescopes you're poaching,
and cherish what you need to believe
like a child of your own, if you want
your family around you when you die,
but if there's more rogue in you than rabbi,
more salmon going against the flow of the bowl
than there are goldfish, set out alone
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poem by Patrick White
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