Snow On The Eyelids Of The Pinecones
Snow on the eyelids of the pine-cones.
Zen pagodas, meditating. Snow
on the withered stars of the wild rose hips
attaining the unattainable like Buddha
enlightened by what's become of Venus in the dawn.
Beauty in the truth of abject desolation.
There's a war going on somewhere
to judge from the number of amputations
the fingers, legs, arms, toes, hands,
the limbs of the dead trees
lying all over the ground as if the woods
were the collapsed tent
of an army field hospital in the Civil War.
The Fort Delaware Death Pen
if I were to take a wild guess,
or maybe Andersonville, who knows,
but I feel I'm walking more like a warden
doing his rounds through the woods at night
than a visitor among these who lie here
in this graveyard of wounded swans
glazed and broken like the handles
of old china shop teacups
butting their empty skulls
against the horns of a bull.
Not like mine. Pure crystal
from glassblowers in medieval Germany.
At least these get to thaw.
And you can see in the withered eyelids
of the leaves whose chlorophyll vision
was once poetically green,
now laced with strychnine and arsenic
when they burned like solar flares in the fall,
and the curtains caught fire
like the veils of an open window
with no one's face in it
to reveal the mystery of who she is
behind the northern lights,
the works of an entire lifetime
clacking like abandoned fortune-cookies,
the hollow carapaces of crabs across
the silver pates of the blunted snowdrifts
ground down like the Appalachian Mountains,
older than the Rockies, worn down
like molars and glaciers
grinding their teeth in their sleep
but infinitely more habitable
than the nose-bleeding heights of renown.
And yet the leaves are not wasted.
The word was spoken.
The fortune foretold
of better things to come
like pears and apples and plums.
The slow autumn dawns of poems
ripened by rising stars and falling flowers.
Snow on the eyelids of the pine-cones.
poem by Patrick White
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Related quotes
As The Snow Falls (song)
As the rain falls down,
It turns to snow.
As the snow falls down,
It hits the ground.
You look outside,
And it’s a sheet of white.
So you think,
Oh what a beautiful night.
The fire is warm,
And the coco too.
And you wonder,
What is next to do?
Looking outside,
All you see is white,
And stars in the sky…ayyy.
The stars are falling,
The stars are falling,
And they cover the ground.
The snow has fallen,
Snow has fallen,
And it covers the ground.
You sit there,
Lookin’ out your window,
Sippin’ on your coco. Oh
Watching as the rain falls down-
The snow falls down-
The stars fall down.
And you see,
All of natures beauty.
The rain falls down,
And it turns to snow.
The snow falls down,
And it hits the ground.
Lookin’ outside,
And it’s a sheet of white.
you bundle up,
and step outside.
standing in the cold,
you look around.
its all so calm and still.
Oh there’s not a single sound.
It’s a silent night,
Oh what a sight.
Snow covers the trees,
So beautiful to see.
Back inside you go
To the fire you stand,
With coco in hand.
You’re cozy and warm,
All alone.
It’s getting late,
So you sleep the night away.
As the rain fell down,
It turned to snow.
As the snow fell down,
It hit the ground.
And the sheet of white,
It disappeared.
The next day you wake,
And the beauty is gone.
The morning sun,
Thawed the lawn.
And the snowy wondrous night is done.
poem by Tessa Monaghan
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Untouched by Grace, but not by Snow
Waking up, noticing the ground
To my surprise I am surround by snow
Every detail in which was lay
With perfect precise wonder
In this most daring betray of beauty
And all is quiet
All is so annoyingly quiet
The dirt that is covered peeks through the ground
Destroying what was once beauty
That was pronounced by the glistened snow
And all I can do is wonder
How this world become simple to lay
When sleep takes us on we lay
And all is deeply quiet
Our dreams become our wonder
Weather we stand on solid ground
An undefined map layer out by snow
Creates to us sleeping beauty
But what is this beauty?
And where does it lay?
What is understood to be a lie as white as snow
And all has become a false quiet
Life, which puts our burdens to the ground
And here we are left to wonder
To whom to we place our wonder
The one who holds onto your beauty?
Who picks you up off the ground
And will be contempt as you lay
This is the lovely quiet
Dawn, of our love as pure as snow
To ask what is this snow
Pure, grace, love to which we wonder
Making this moment freeze in quiet
Holding unto this betrayed beauty
Which pours unto us as we lay
To the emissive ground
To become as pure as snow is beauty
But do we wonder under stars we lay?
And all was quiet as the snow flake touched ground
And The Snow Fell
I remember big soft wet flakes
falling on the tracks all the way
streets filling with that wet snow
the trolley I was riding plowing
through fields of city snow
like a big red bulldozer
I remember clear as day
sitting with Ma at the table
in the kitchen looking out
at the snow falling
Ma and I sat there
streets and rooftops
disappearing in the falling snow
that covered all
and the snow fell along the Rhine
in Germany
and in the dark woods of the Ardennes
we sat there and watched
as the fields and woods in France
filled with gently falling snow
and my Pa lying dead
somewhere in France
and snow fell softly
all the way
across Europe
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
WIth no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
poem by Robert Frost
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A Snowy Sunset
Snow Snow on the ground
Sun is sinking down down down
Trees trees covered in Wight
People gasp at the sight
Snow Snow on the ground
Animals scurry all around
Snow Snow in your hair
Stiffness and cold in the air
Snow Snow on the ground
People sledding down down down
Hot Coco and coffee inside
Why not go for another sled ride
Snow Snow on the ground
The sun has set past the ground
Lights light up the city bright
People every where say what a sight
poem by Miranda Will
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Autumn Falls
Autumn falls,
Before Indian Summer begins.
And in New England...
Temperatures cool,
To warm again.
Autumn falls!
And so do Chestnuts and Pine cones,
As well as leaves blown swiftly...
From an assortment of Oak and Maple trees.
And those that remain to cling...
Bring astonishing colors,
Of Orange, Red and mixtures of hues...
Yellow and Brown to them bring.
Autumn falls...
Dramatically!
To leave barren the trees,
Except for the Pine...
Mysteriously,
Just before the first snow of Winter...
Covers with a bright white majesticness.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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And You Shall Forever Be
And you shall forever be
all that could not be said of me
though I spoke for myself as long as I could
to answer your absence in paint and words
like this night creek talking in tongues to itself.
I see the maple leaves rotting in manuscript
like the dead civilization of a mummified language
that never made it into print.
And though I know every name
of the wildflowers that did, and of the stars,
their perennial myths of origin,
and of the fireflies, their efflorescent haikus,
tonight I walk among bones and pelvises of ice,
the desecration of forms, limbs lobbed off
like the right arms of offended trees and the eyes
of small skulls plucked out like stillborn moons
that never made it through the winter.
Alone with this emptiness which yet remains
the biggest clue I've ever found
to the whereabouts of myself,
I am not estranged by my usual compassion
for outcast things with no voice of their own.
There is no pillow of snow over the mouth
of what can't be said without me.
The dead don't hold their fingers
up to their lips to bid me keep silent.
They're all dancing wildly to lyrics of their own
in a winter carnival of deathmasks
that have shed their bodies
like the hags of the withered waterlilies
trying to wash the brown out of their gowns
like sunspots from the memory of the stars.
As if there were an eloquence
in the radiance of their rags
that overwhelmed the silence
with the sacred syllables of a mother-tongue
that has no word for time or death.
No word for life that distinguishes them from me.
Not just moonlight on the barkless limbs of mannequins
that have shed their skin seductively.
Not the dead of a northern Pompey
frozen in ash and ice and snow
catastrophically posed for generations to come
but the hymns of the homeless
who've finally found common ground
with the tent cities of the stars high overhead
and the gypsy moths in the Dutch elms.
The long vowels of the living joining hands
with the skeletal consonants of the dead
to make one whole word we can say in our sleep
like a secret we keep between ourselves.
And for the moment I feel almost complete here
like the first draft of a book
that the dead have yet to rewrite.
And though I've said it thousands of times before
in as many ways as I was inspired to,
like a fire that reared up at the mere shadow of the whip
to outrun the starlight for the sheer spirit
of challenging the will of this body
dug like a spur in its own ribs,
it was clear from the very beginning,
as clear as poppies and marigolds
in the summer of their oral traditions,
no more can be said in the dead of winter
than can be said by the living
to coax the wild crocuses out in spring.
You might be a lone night bird
that inhabits the woods like a magus
with too many stars to follow
to follow any one of them
and gratify your life by stargazing
and calling the faithful to prayer
like a muezzin in the morning
with the voice of an underground river.
And for all your lucidity you might never find
the long shadows of your ancestors
erecting the waterlilies of their tents
along the riverbanks of those rivers and lifelines
you keep returning to every year like waterbirds.
Or you could find no sign of anyone
for light years who could recognize you
for who you are even as you change time-zones
like a child with ageing eyes
who was raised by the alone with the Alone
in an incomprehensible solitude that included everyone.
Here where distinctions break down
and the dead and the living both draw
from the same source as they've always done
each is known to the other
by attributes that neither of them have.
The warm heart of a black rose
looking back over its shoulder
at a bend in the night creek,
the moon rising up over the valley,
a pearl in partial eclipse,
taking one long, last look
at the broken cages of ghostly tree limbs
and shattered ladders of lifeboat wing bones
that drowned on the way to their own rescue.
Is one side of a window truer than another?
Inner and outer, I and the other
truly separated by this mere hole in my eye?
Do the stars streaming through my mind
feel a subtle change in the nature of the sky
when they do, a different feel to the darkness,
something strange about the flowers
they open like loveletters, sensing someone
has been tampering with their mail
as if the message were still the medium
but with a different return address?
Is my absence any less baffling than my presence?
These with the hearts of departed things
any less whole or real or displaced
or death any less of a prelude to time
than any other point in its passage is?
Even in death, even when the sun
shines at midnight it's always dawn.
The waterbirds go. The waterbirds come back.
Like an ongoing dialogue in an hourglass
where content is the same as timing
and the most enduring of things
are the things that most readily pass
between the bright vacancy
and dark abundance of life
like the moon that keeps growing
without coming or going like a journey
standing in the doorway
of its own unending threshold.
poem by Patrick White
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THE Pine
Shaft of beauty towering heavenly high
Dropping fragrances on passers by
Swaying in the Autumn breeze
The tall majestic pine trees
Shedding it's cones to the ground
Swaddled in needles all around
Fragrant and green in the snow
Ancient trees how tall they grow
Cooling dark green pines orth
Evergreen needles reaching forth
Like a sentry standing saluting the sky
Raising up through the clouds so high
Summer and winter under boughs spread
Snows of centuries have crowned your head
The fragrance of virtue of the pine
Rises to the heavens so sublime.
Orth - Straight.
poem by Hazel Connelly
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Snow Is Falling
Snow is falling: snow is falling.
Geranium flowers reach
for the blizzard’s small white stars
past the window’s edge.
Snow is falling, all is lost,
the whole world’s streaming past:
the flight of steps on the back stairs,
the corner where roads cross.
Snow is falling: snow is falling,
not snowflakes stealing down,
Sky parachutes to earth instead,
in his worn dressing gown.
As if he’s playing hide-and-seek,
across the upper landings,
a mad thing, slowly sneaks,
Sky creeps down from the attic.
It’s all because life won’t wait,
before you know, it’s Christmas here.
And look, in a minute,
suddenly it’s New Year.
Snow is falling, deeper – deeper.
Maybe, with that same stride
in that same tempo,
with that same languor,
Time’s going by?
Year after year, perhaps,
passing, as snow’s falling,
like words in a poem?
Snow’s falling: snow’s falling.
Snow is falling, all is lost –
the whitened passers-by,
leaves’ startled showing,
the corners where roads cross.
poem by Boris Pasternak
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Walk With My Spirit
In a hotel room watching the white snow fall
Glistening past with beckoning mossy leaves,
Drape with beauty outside upon the wall
Silent ice in the night hung from the trees.
In the gentle night I took a walk with my spirit,
Snow caught my eyes fluttering with little wings,
They try to fly flapping with all their might,
But end up covering the street and soak clothes.
Cold sober response shook the worn knees,
And my tearing teeth broke lamentable silence,
A smitten figure misplace in night ease,
Try to walk outside upon snows frozen ice.
My limbs dug tunnels and tried to hold me tight,
But the ground took my stride to skip and dance,
I walk the path where the street had gone,
For once in my life I felt carried by a spirit.
Along the path set for me with beaten snow,
I started to float and struggle to find a way home,
I should have sunk deep in sleep by now,
Instead, plague with regret; I am out on my own.
I went where footsteps lost their charms,
The softer images in mind losing the fight,
Trying to stay alive swaying with my hips and arms,
The images weren't meant to last through the night.
poem by Gerry Legister
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Looking Good
I remember big soft flakes
falling all the way home
Streets filling with snow
the trolley plowing through it
like a big red bulldozer
I remember sitting at the table
in the kitchen looking out
at the falling snow
It snowed all night long
Ma and I sat there watching
streets and sidewalks and rooftops
disappearing in a white blanket
of snow that fell and fluttered down
and the snow fell along the Rhine
in Germany and in the dark Ardennes-
fields and woods in France filling
with gently falling snow
and my Pa lying dead
somewhere in France
as snow fell all the way
across Europe
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Snow Fall in the Moonlight
Snow fall in the moonlight,
Like soft cotton falling from the sky,
Covering the ground and bushes in pure white,
Glowing beautifully in the night of December.
Snow fall in the moonlight,
Like a child I walked happily through the pure white snow,
Making soft crackling sound in the silent winter night,
When I reached the far end of the open field,
I turned to see the path I had taken,
A straight line through the pure white snow.
Snow fall in the moonlight,
Can there be a more beautiful sight than this?
As I look into the night sky,
And the soft snow flakes touches my face,
I breathe the fresh cold air of the winter night.
As I stood alone in silence, stillness in the air,
My feeling and longing comes to my lips,
And I thank Allah for this beautiful moment,
A chance to see snow fall in the moonlight!
(In memory of Belgian winter,1986)
poem by Spiritual Seeker
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Spoils Of The Dead
Two fairies it was
On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
With the flowers to play.
The flowers they plucked
They cast on the ground
For others, and those
For still others they found.
Flower-guided it was
That they came as they ran
On something that lay
In the shape of a man.
The snow must have made
The feathery bed
When this one fell
On the sleep of the dead.
But the snow was gone
A long time ago,
And the body he wore
Nigh gone with the snow.
The fairies drew near
And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
And a chain at his side.
They knelt in the leaves
And eerily played
With the glittering things,
And were not afraid.
And when they went home
To hide in their burrow,
They took them along
To play with to-morrow.
When you came on death,
Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
I remember that I did.
But I recognised death
With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
The spoils of the dead.
poem by Robert Frost
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Ode On Snow
Snowstorms!
Piles of snow!
Soft, crystalline white snowflakes!
Feathered rain!
Powder snow!
Falling snow!
Up to the kneecaps snow!
Snow stuck on sidewalks and streets!
Snowballs!
Snowmen!
Snowdrift!
Sledding on soft snow!
Crunching snow!
Snow cones!
poem by M.L. Squier
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Autumn, Thee Lovely...
Perhaps 'twas destiny that stole its youth,
Autumn was never privy to the truth,
grown barren by He who weaves,
too early for snow, too late for leaves.
Oft it wore a counterfeit smile,
imploring the bounties of Summer wild,
to allay its advance from green to brown,
before its final journey to the ground.
Promises of slow demise never kept,
as red Autumn shed, she plaintively wept,
till Winter perplexed queried,
why Fall was so wanton-wearied?
'Willst thou then lend me snow? '
Winter alarmed at this ignoble show,
stripped off Autumn's remaining bower,
she lay undressed, like a jilted lover.
Yet 'ere His Worship, tipped the Horn
fruits ripened unafraid of being summer born,
Earth bloomed into corn's ears,
Rain fell to soothe the season's fears.
Still today we hear the Horn play,
in its music we see the well-fed sway,
and sleep 'neath a mellow Sun over field,
amidst once vagrant, now fragrant Autumn yield.
Obliterations Of Beauty And We Weep
Obliterations of beauty and we weep
for what cannot long abide in us
because we, not the rose, are the ones
who are passing so irrevocably away
into an abyss that doesn't
take the measure of anything.
The lake knows the time
by the wingspan of its waterbirds.
I note the location of the stars
in the rotation of the Big Dipper.
And there are crickets
that will yield the time as well.
Time, too, like human solitude
is embodied in the things of this world.
Time perishes when we do,
is born with us, matures,
and embraces our ends as its own nature.
Time sets its pace to the passage of us.
We are the muse, the motivator, the demi-urge
of its passion for shedding
the leaves and flowers and moon like skin.
And we're the ones who grow infinite
at the speed of light so that everything stops
immeasurably from there on everafter.
All things returning to the one, and the one,
returning to transcendence. Which is why
I come here this late at night when the stars
are as far from people as they can be
and yet they're still as intimate to me
as my eyes are. A mutually creative continuum.
The star makes the eye I need to see it by.
I am the fragrance of the wildflowers
and the adamantine insights of the rocks.
The singing master of the nightbirds.
The oracle in the leprous skull of the raccoon.
And my heart is one long, continuous moonrise
when I think of how the dead still animate me.
How they cling to my heart like ants to a peony
to let me know when it's time to bloom.
The dead trees house the mosquitoes and the herons.
The fallen pine cones, the seed koans of Zen masters
under their brittle eyelids waiting for the fire
to crack them deciduously open into evergreens.
I don't lament the passivity of the dead in my life
because I put them to good use in their capacity
as enlightened mentors who urge me
to live splendidly whatever I encounter in the world
for all our sakes. I can be the blossom and the fruit
on the dead branch, as easily as a red-winged blackbird
sings from the green and leafless alike.
Not a bush wolf raises its voice up to the moon
that I don't feel its distant longing in my own throat
like a sacred syllable half way to blossoming among the dead
who always hear it like an auspicious beginning
to the summons of their leave-taking in the fall,
to the deeper greeting in the meaning of farewell.
poem by Patrick White
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Winter With a Question
The aging trees will creak and groan
To find themselves ringed by frost in sleep
And snow by the wind already blown
Cast upon snow already deep.
The cold is echoed only by silence all,
And the leaves of Autumn entombed in white
At the place where leaves fall
And passing time, vanish from sight.
Who is it that judges these—
Sends leaves beneath the snow
And trees to shiver alongside trees? —
And where do they go?
poem by Ronny Self
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Song Of The Evergreens
Listen to the briskly whistling winter evergreen
Whispering through the frozen morning light
And tell me whats to come
Saying my time is near
Never fear
I close each year
Im winter
Reminding me to trade my t-shirts for my woven wools
Trade my sandals for my skis
Whispered warnings in the wind
Saying soon come the dancing snowflakes
Theyre kissing every tree
Theyre kissing you and me
Please hurry
Falling
Dazzling dancing diamonds from the sky
Prisms
Rainbow sparkled flurries in our eyes
Whipping across the frozen crystal meadow
Pond of ice
Race the snow
Well build a warming fire there
And cuddle close and wine and dine
The setting sun
The morning light will find us high
Shooting down the glistening mountain side
Screaming through the whispering pines
The freedom of each day
Will cleanse our minds
I can hardly wait for winter
I can hardly wait for the snow
I can hardly hardly wait for winter
I can hardly wait for the snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow
song performed by by Chicago
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Four Seasons
I gaze out through my window to the colours of the leaves,
Reds and browns and yellows floating like fairies from the trees.
I follow the as they burst alive and dance among the breeze,
And my smile is echoed effortlessly in the colours of the leaves.
I peer out through my curtains to the snow upon the ground,
Dreaming of the diamonds drowsily fluttering from the clouds,
Strewn across the hedgerows and the fields and all around,
The snow lies peacefully sleeping, a jewel upon the ground.
And look! - all of a sudden grow the bluebells in the wood!
Swaying happily to and fro, just like they always should.
And as the spring awakens, rusty from the flood,
The sun begins to shine upon the bluebells in the wood.
At last, through my curtains I see the flowers of July,
Their beauty almost mirrored in the sunshine in the sky,
And I see the tuplips grinning as a bright blue butterfly
Lands upon the petals of the flowers in July.
poem by Twilight Whispers
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Softly, Softly, Now
Softly, softly, now; here there is no beneath or above, no hell
for miscreant flowers opening for the moon, no ghosts
who can’t find their way back to the grave. No one
is unacceptable in this place where even the dead dig
for the blue bones of heaven, cracking
them open like fortune-cookies
to taste the light gold of the marrow. This is the kingdom
of empty cups waiting to be filled
by the black wine of union that ripened
in the skull-shrines
of a thousand drunken buddhas
begging outside a brothel door
for the same holy candle to show them the way home. People
are seldom grateful for what they don’t know
and thought is only the dog of reality
if you can catch my drift in this back-alley
where I’m dancing with a gust of wind. How lightly
you step off my tongue into your veils and shadows
dropping your masks like petals all over the asphalt
until you can’t be seen. Is that freedom or death; do you
bathe in your grave or your heart
when you remember the sorrows you’ve buried like daggers
in the wounds that widowed you? Do you tremble
like a kite at the end of your own life-line
waiting to be found by the witching-wands of the lightning;
or have you forgotten your madness, the dark jewels
in which you took sanctuary for the night
like an orphan in her longing, the crazy wisdom
that put on the costume of a dead clown
and offered herself to the blind and humourless
like a chessboard? Do you still swim naked in sapphires, raise
gardens of fish on the moon, perform
open-heart surgery on paralyzed serpents
that wake up from the anaesthetic between your legs
like a spring thaw, believing they can walk and then
come crawling back, veteran amputees
demanding crutches? Wild moon on a lonely river, night-lotus,
flesh and stars, every moment of you is origin; why doubt
your own reflection in the mirror of my voice? I’m
not selling snake-oil on the midways of eternity, filling the sails
of a slave-ship and calling it the love-boat; this is not
a wardrobe of auroras I buy up cheap in Montreal
and hawk from the back of a truck in Sunday parking lots. If the words
dance, if the wind plays lightly in the leaves, if the fire sings
and the diamonds flow and the rain falls musically
like phantom fingers on the spotted touch-me-nots, should I impugn
the graces of perception that sing, unseen, in the deep woods
because they fly without a limp, praise without a stutter?
I see in whispers; I hear in glimpses. Nameless affinities rooted in silence
bloom in the saying and fall back into themselves,
fountains within fountains, pursing their waters
to kiss the light as it breaks like glee against them. Fountains,
not pedestals. Deep sky-dwellers ride the helix of their own thermals,
their wings spread from dawn to dawn, and if they build,
they build from the sky down, not footstools, scaffoldings, and temples,
not ladders of bone at the bottom of dry wells, but tents of light
in the secret grottoes of space, supple as life.
Up is not up nor down, down, when you dream in the seed, neither
born nor unborn, yet nothing missing; creation within the Uncreate,
the intimately impersonal holy mother that is born and perishes
with us. I walk this vastness alone; who, then, to impress or pedestal
in this empty, pathless, mouthless, dark bliss of a world
where even the silence is speechless before it? If
the ignorant see the world as an open hat on a lonely streetcorner
begging for change and prizes; let them. That is their hour,
their seeing, their word. All seeing is a kind of love.
Orchids and dandelions alike. All that is loved is seen to be beautiful
but not all that is beautiful is seen to be loved. I see
a blue rose, shedding lives like petals and skies,
night skies, freaked by stars tattooed on heavy eyelids, falling
into dream and destiny. Graffiti Mona Lisa mother Bacchanal,
mad, menstruating, moon-dump bag-lady, I see you
vaulting topless over the horns of lunar bulls in ancient Crete,
or lady of the lake, royal witch-bride, bored with weddings
and vase-tamed bouquets, waiting to grasp the hilt
of magic swords whose power is older than the stones
from which they’re drawn. And there, in the window
of the thirteenth house of the zodiac, isn’t that you
plucking dead leaves off the herbs you grow on the sill, hanging curtains
you’ve pirated thread by thread from old mythologies
and woven again like the moon into light? Crow-weaver,
tell me, have you ever stolen silver from the mirror to heal a wounded vision,
or known an appetite so great, so incomprehensible
it consumed the galaxies like krill? Death is the dark inspiration,
pure energy, radiant and whole, the mute mirror that reflects nothing
that stands before it in an arrogance of forms; the face you wore
before the beginning of faces. Already achieved,
not something up ahead, a black star on a white night, the dark mother
who fills the wombs with gestures of light. Death is the ancient future
that passes instantaneously, the crone-nymph, oyster and pearl,
the miner in the ore that releases the child like a bell. The dream that wakes you
from a dream, the dead tree that gives birth to a bird. Death is
the terrifying abundance, the terrible joy of perfection falling
into perfection, the honey and the horror of the sacrificial wound. The child
that carries her mother in her womb. Death is no less life, no less us,
than a wave is water. Death has no beginning so life is never
finished. One afternoon, in an autumn garden, the air shuddered with mine
and I knew that it was already done like the stars above the flowers
of gardens to come. What death, then, to stare into
that isn’t already under your feet? Wombs, waterclocks, and coffins;
can you tell me the difference? Here’s my skull. Break it.
The bird’s already out singing you like a handful of joy
hurled well beyond itself into the dawn, and in the morning market
among laughter and apples
the phantoms array their illusions.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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