What I Wanted To Show You
What I wanted to show you,
you will not see.
What I wanted to give you,
you will not receive.
The wind may mourn your passing
like an abandoned dog
and the leaves of the silver Russian olive
may be baffled into silver
by the way you left the gate open
to a bigger, colder, darker world than it was
before you told me you loved me
like an arsonist in a wheat field,
a comet above the willow tree
that wept its way into autumn.
Go. I lay no claims or obligations
at your feet anymore than I would
try to smudge space
with the black rose of the night
that tastes of old eclipses in my blood.
You say ebulliently
you want to know passionately
the depths of love,
but like the fools before you
who blundered into the fire,
you're only witching for volcanoes
with the tongue of a snake.
As well look for fishroads
under the dead seas of the moon
as follow the path you're on.
And your beauty is no excuse,
your body no sanctuary,
your blackberry heart
no pilgrim to anywhere
you can't stand in the light
trying on shadows like lingerie
in the mirror of the delusions
you've clarified like the skin of a bubble
that has smeared the reflection of the world so long
you think you're a planet with trees.
You're a spiritual junkie
jonesing for suffusions of the inconceivable
to animate the dust and galaxies
you have no life or love to breathe into
other than that little wind
you carry around in a bottle
in case you're ever stranded
without an emergency exit
from all the lies you tell in paradise.
You suffer the mythically inflated gigantism
of your own unbearable insignificance,
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poem by Patrick White
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