When I Was A Child
When I was a child
I was uprooted like a weed of lightning
and cast like a dead snake
on a festering heap of garbage.
I was angry before I knew
what anger was;
and ever since
radical dismissals
have cored the diamond drills
of their vacuity into my heart,
sudden abandonments
for no reason; the wind
slamming the door on my fingers,
rejection repealing
the flawed doctrine of my skin.
Pariah, poet, exile, outlaw, heretic,
I was passed a shard
of the broken jug of the moon
like an ostrakon
and then the stern angels
painted an X in my own blood
on the door of my house
to ward me off like plague.
I was a child. I was hurt. I was broken.
I became a law
and enforced my acceptance
with the authority of my rage.
Turned inside out
like a dirty sock
or a black hole,
and every second-hand future
the donors ever tried out on me
to see if they could find one
that fit like a straitjacket,
a catastrophe,
I put my mouth to the sky
like a glassblower
to enlarge a space of my own over me
like a planet
rummaging through a wardrobe of atmospheres
until I could give my secret consent
to the stars that shone down upon me
like a wounded bull
in a labyrinth of alleys
and were so inhumanly far away
I was purged like a soiled surgical utensil
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poem by Patrick White
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