<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477005" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Were There Stars</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were there stars in your hair that night? <br> I cannot remember, <br> so taken with your face<br>and the mystery and the silence and the sorrow<br> of the tender bell in your eyes <br> that could summon ghosts <br>of yesterday's embodiments to the fire <br> of any passion that lost itself prophetically <br> at a rave of shadows among the trees. <br>You eased out of your wardrobe of rivers<br> like a snake on the moon <br> sloughing its skin like the eclipse <br>of a far more vulnerable shining, <br> and I couldn't tell if you were <br> a doe or a lynx<br>stepping out of the alder groves warily <br> to lap the moonlight <br> that flaked the shore <br>with the silver petals of an undulant rose<br> older and darker than night blood. <br> I could feel the danger within you, <br>the abyss of the early grave <br> that waited for you like a key <br> to come in out of the pain <br>that bled you like a shadow<br> pouring out of an open wound<br> that whispered to you like a secret scream <br>only the dead who owned you could hear. <br> Your hunger desperately sought salvation <br> from the eyes <br>that pleaded with you <br> to blow yourself out like a candle, <br> cancel the inevitability of your suffering <br>with the shudder and sigh of sex. <br> We lay down naked together <br> by the willow-stained waters<br>in that summer of flesh <br> and sought oblivion from each other <br> like two compatible cremations<br>that concealed a ravenous phoenix <br> ending its fast of fire. <br> Purified by the depth and darkness <br>of your intensities, <br> I burned in you<br> and felt the flames <br>of a dangerous angel <br> who had broken her afterlife like a curfew<br> flow over me <br>like dawn at a keyboard of feathers. <br> Your breasts still come up overnight<br> like supple mushrooms against my chest <br>and the moist heat of your mouth <br>throbbing with flowers like July <br> as you seized your joy <br>from the agony of the roots you tormented<br> to give up their dead<br> like bruised cherries. <br>I have never died as fully since <br> at the insistence <br>of any woman's appetite<br>nor known a night so final, <br> so brutal with time and beauty <br> as the pendulous moon swung <br>like an executioner's ax <br> over the nape of its own reflection <br> swanning on the waters.<br>We made love as if <br> we were both defying <br> the truth we didn't need to say.<br>I wanted to plead with you, <br> I wanted to call out into your emptiness <br> like a beseeching bird <br>disappearing into a dark valley, <br> but my voice ran ahead of its echo like light <br> and the things I would have asked you <br>not to do<br> had already been achieved. <br> Heroin, your asp, <br>at the funeral I stood back <br> beyond the baffled wreaths of flowers <br> and the ambivalent silence <br>of the modest gathering that mourned you, <br> maculate in the shadows <br> of the Japanese plum tree <br>we once made love under<br> and I kissed the rose of your blood <br> shedding in mine <br>like a wound <br>my love was never sword enough to heal<br> as they closed<br>and boarded you over like a well. <br> I spent the night like an empty vase <br> beside your grave <br>until the stars that bloomed above you like wildflowers <br> thawed my tears in the morning light.<br> I walked out of the cemetery <br>through the hard harps and spears<br> of its iron gates<br> and I have never been back.<br>The years since have been <br> chameleonic as a hooker<br> who plys her art <br>on the stairs of a temple <br> even the priests of my lust <br> are forbidden to enter, <br>but as you said I would <br> as you lay with me that night <br> like a knife beside the sea, <br>I have returned to you over and over again<br> like a witching wand<br> looking for water in hell, <br>like a cult of one to a lost island<br> that holds you like a secret <br> and wept like a candle of honey <br>in the dark hive of your unanswerable silence, <br> intoning the names <br> of an impossible god <br>on a rosary of black suns<br> until my heart hangs like a bell <br> dumb with grief<br>looking up at the stars <br> you rinsed like a tide from your hair.<br> And I lean on the crutch and the crook <br>of a shepherd's question, <br> looking everywhere for you<br> like the wind <br>sweeping the shadows of fireflies <br> like the fall of hair from your eyes <br> that night you tore yourself away from me <br>like a veil of blood and sorrows<br> wounded by the terrible light <br> of the black pearl <br>that ripened within you like the skull <br> of a full eclipse.<br> O my poor, broken angel, <br>you might have been fat and frumpy by now <br> if you had lived. <br> I could have watched your beauty <br>shed like the moon over the years, <br> and smile like an island <br> to remember how lost I was in your tides once, <br>a constellation of starfish <br> tumbled like dice in your dark undertow, <br> trying to shine, god, how <br>I tried to shine for you, how <br> I ached to embrace your planet safely <br> in the mandala of an empowering radiance <br>that could show you <br> I was worth living for<br> if nothing else. <br>Given the freedom <br> of the emptiness that engulfed us both, <br> we could have lived within each other, <br>we could have evolved our own atmospheres, <br> appointed our own stars, <br> written our own myths of origin <br>on the black pages of that journal of skies<br> where you scribbled down the events <br> of your pre-emptive afterlife <br>as if you wanted to make your ghost indelible. <br> As it was, the only thing I could do, <br> was take you in <br>like the last breath of a summer night <br> I could never let go of<br> without following it <br>like a shadow of you into death. <br> I haven't wished for much over the years, <br> and the dreams have come and gone as they will, <br>and my hair has gone gray <br> and my eyes are looped like powerlines <br> and the sad bells of a heavy solitude <br>that has yoked me to the grindstone of the turning world <br> to mill the stars like a tide <br> on the blood wheel of a worn heart.<br>I finally burned and broke all the weeping mirrors<br> I consulted like half-assed mediums <br> to see if I could restore you somehow<br>to the more intimate shining of that last night<br> you turned and ran back, <br> your shoes in your hand, <br>to make sure your final kiss would endure like a temple.<br> You pitied the agony of shapeshifting <br> you knew the black water ahead <br>was about to go through<br> as it smashed like goblets and crystal chandeliers <br> on the roaring skulls of the rocks.<br>You pitied me because you knew I loved you, <br> because you knew you were already <br> a future memory <br>and I was a prophecy from the past <br> that had ridden beyond itself like light <br> to illuminate nothing but your absence<br>measured in the filaments and lifelines<br> of eyeless oceans <br>like a seabird <br> circling a blind lighthouse on the moon.</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> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=477005" data-title="Were There Stars de Patrick White" data-description="Were there stars in your hair that night? I cannot remember, so taken with your face and the mystery and the silence and the sorrow of the tender bell in your eyes that could summon ghosts of yesterday's embodiments to the fire of any ..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black