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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476731" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Lady Nightshade's Suicide Wasn't Vain Enough</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lady Nightshade’s suicide wasn’t vain enough.<br>She insisted on dying for the world.<br>She finally stepped through the black door. <br>She took all that splendour of mind and flesh <br>and instead of going supernova to make a statement<br>let it shrink down into<br>the single snowflake of a white dwarf <br>in a spring thaw. <br>She died as unobtrusively as a wild flower perishes.<br>Lady Nightshade died like a whisper in a hurricane of razorblades<br>a candle flame <br>a toy in the corner<br>that knows when it’s time to let the child go. <br>She knew her greatest claim to fame<br>was perpetual silence.<br>There are some eyes so clear and radiant<br>the light’s too shy to enter.<br>There are some mirrors <br>that have to turn their backs on you<br>to show you what you’re looking at. <br>Lady Nightshade died like a black mass at the eclipse of a water lily <br>and then blew out the flames<br>on a skeletal replica <br>of the extinct candelabra <br>she made of her fossil remains.<br>It was hard to keep up with the half-life of some of her lies <br>but she could tell time radioactively <br>like numbers on a watch that glow in the dark <br>while the rest of us had to rely on a water clock.<br>She could see things coming <br>from the asteroid’s point of view<br>and when you heard her speak <br>of what she thought it was you should seek <br>among all those invisible things <br>we make visible through our lives <br>even if you only had a rag of blood <br>snagged on a thorn of what’s left of a heart in your body<br>she made a deep and lasting impact.<br>You looked at her <br>and you knew the time of night<br>and the weather. <br>In her nuclear winter<br>you were either a species of delusion <br>that went extinct <br>or you changed the way she did <br>and she was a legend among chameleons. <br>She was a rainbow’s worst nightmare. <br>With her <br>you weren’t deep enough into anything <br>until you’d dug your own grave. <br>She could hold your spirit up to your face <br>like a mirror one moment<br>and in the next <br>tear it off like a bandage on a deep wound <br>as if she were unmasking a new scar on the dark side of the moon. <br>She could make you smile like a face-painted clown <br>who just had his smile widened<br>from cheek to cheek <br>by a scalpel.<br>She was the daughter of intensity <br>but god help the snake <br>who tried to ride the dragon <br>by hanging on with its fangs<br>as if those were any kind of match <br>for her crescents and claws.<br>She could weld a forked tongue <br>back into a spear head <br>and bury it like the Clovis point of a viper<br>deep in the deserts of Arizona <br>where it would take twelve thousand years <br>for someone to find it<br>like a flint knapped skull with lockjaw. <br>With her it was ok to be the universe <br>as long as she were its physical laws<br>and they were at all times and everywhere <br>applicable and true. <br>And god what a body.<br>You took one look at her <br>and you knew already <br>you’d been sexually bruised.<br>She was living proof <br>that on the Day of Creation <br>when God made woman <br>he had a muse<br>and the rest of us were plagiarized <br>from an overdue Texas textbook <br>that denied evolution <br>was creatively collaborative and true.<br>The immutable faithful still profaning existence<br>where everything is the genome of the many <br>and all are the chosen few.<br>But Lady Nightshade was more amused by <br>than convinced of her own beauty.<br>She was too intelligent <br>not to use it as an index <br>of male cupidity <br>twisting their inflated multiverse<br>like birthday balloons in hyperspace<br>into her favourite kind of lapdog<br>as Leonard Cohen sang in the background<br>no man ever got a woman back <br>by begging on his knees. <br>She was the kind of hunger <br>that could teach a rude man to say please<br>and a wiser one<br>who’s been seasoned by the sea <br>under full sail <br>like an orchard in a storm <br>thank-you.<br>She could roll men’s skulls like dice <br>that always came up snake-eyes <br>because she could see how clearly <br>they were estranged from their own reflections<br>like telescopes that can see everything but themselves<br>bring the far near <br>shorten the mile <br>be the last day of the thirteenth month<br>in a leaping light year<br>that stays one step ahead of itself <br>like a thief of the moon <br>coming in through the back door <br>of someone else’s homelessness. <br>She loved to give performance poetry readings <br>where she’d scream at the featured guests<br>molesting the microphone with their monogamous poems <br>like the accused at the accuser<br>like an oracular snake pit from the audience<br>or a banshee at the window <br>Do you know how many muses <br>you blind sleepwalkers <br>have turned into social workers? <br>And in the barefoot silence that ensued <br>no one dropped the other shoe <br>and you just knew <br>those on stage <br>felt like the cutting edge of a new ice age <br>that would be the crib-death of inspiration <br>and thousands of baby mammoths <br>that would be clutched by dozy glaciers <br>like stuffed teddy-bears for security and warmth<br>for the next twenty-five thousand years<br>of black ice a mile high<br>trying to transcend itself <br>like a recurring nightmare.<br>Lady Nightshade wasn’t the kind of revolutionary<br>that showed her face to the world <br>like a mask turned inside out.<br>She never let her certainty get in the way of her doubt. <br>I remember watching her one night <br>after we’d made love <br>look out from the fourteenth floor <br>of the Hotel des Gouverneurs<br>at St. Denys Boulevard <br>lit up like a Nazca landing strip <br>in the middle of the starscape <br>that bloomed like Montreal.<br>She was naked. <br>She was vulnerable. <br>But I could see a bridge in the far distance <br>on her right shoulder<br>like a threshold that was all<br>exit and entrance <br>at the extreme ends of things <br>always at right angles to the direction of the flow.<br>It arched over the river <br>like the Egyptian sky goddess Nut <br>her body night-blue with white stars<br>that lined the bridge like streetlamps <br>as fragile and delicate in the aerial atmospherics <br>as the eyelashes of nocturnal humming birds.<br>And I saw right then and there <br>how vastly she longed for her ghost<br>to ready her for death <br>like a lover from another lifetime <br>when suffering wasn’t <br>the only natural renewable resource<br>you could rely on to make a living. <br>A wounded hawk never asks for pity <br>and she didn’t ask for mine. <br>She was the key<br>that left everything open <br>and for awhile<br>we were inseparably alone<br>because I was the lock<br>that couldn’t keep anything in.<br>She jumped from her bridge<br>into the lifeboat of a coffin<br>and left a farewell on the mirror <br>written by a bleeding snail of scarlet lipstick. <br>I don’t know what star she was following <br>but back here on earth <br>there’s a black hole that eats its own shadow <br>and chandeliers of firelies <br>that keep putting themselves out in their tears.<br>Lady Nightshade never cheated her solitude<br>by buffing it with love. <br>Lady Nightshade played solitaire <br>with a Tarot pack of mirrors. <br>She saw what turned up. <br>Lady Nightshade followed the Queen of Cups to the block.<br>She said a few words <br>that ransomed her life with a candle. <br>She blew it out.<br>She swanned like a summer constellation <br>on the smoke of a distant fire.<br>She drowned her silver sword in the star stream<br>like a barrette she took out of her hair<br>to let it blow away like the fragrance <br>of something beautiful hidden somewhere<br>like a secret that was meant to be kept. <br>Lady Nightshade bloomed like a bruise. <br>A blue rose. <br>A new moon.<br>Dark. <br>Unknown. <br>And cherished.<br>And when she perished <br>only strangers could have guessed why I wept.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Patrick+White">Patrick White</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476731" data-title="Lady Nightshade's Suicide Wasn't Vain Enough de Patrick White" data-description="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 dow..."></div>
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