Feb 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
219.
You are the debt that has to be repaid
your habit patterns are your only
cage
stay far away from wanting more
more humility among the trees
the cicadas have done their work and
gone
leaving each Egyptian carapace behind
our windowscreen and blacktop and the
lawn
worn out from sheer song fallen
Babylonian with black and gold
I am your mother too don’t you
remember
London Bridge and looked upstream
into the far west we come from now.
220.
Call it weather it will watch you bird-eyed
with wary
you came to rape our fields and steal
our sheep
nothing we can do to stop you but it
can
it knows the way you Troyans trust in
signs
the white pig nestled in leaf shadow
the cloud walking girl-like up the
oak-weary hill
we will give you more signs than you
can read
you’ll never trust your bed again
with all the dreams
this is our land and we are
semaphores
we can’t do anything at all but fill
your senses
every sense complete and all the
information false
the way only the truth can really
lead you wrong.
Feb 20, 2015 | Uncategorized
217.
To measure a day by a meaning
lean crystals sift into your lap
the varieties of greens exhaust
vocabulary
no need to describe what everyone
remembers
the whole street a secret garden a
hidden sign
even a name knows how to hold your
hand
wise fingers apportion peace and war
but have I forgiven all those I hurt
shutters up on the primeval coast
we help each other wade ashore
and nothing more
the gift just happens the sun just rose.
218.
Do it the easy way begin with someone
else
we dance in trance a rhetoric of
selfishness
all we have to give our bodies are
we choose our functions in a balanced
world
whatever it is it always works
that’s the mind for you
no escape from the balanced aquarium
we live and die as suits another and
we are that other
so relax and try to cheat less on
your taxes
it doesn’t work it all comes out of
you
can’t save can’t spend can’t mar
can’t mend
free will is an advertising
ploy.
Feb 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
214.
Sometimes finish something be enough
to begin with
‘a balanced aquarium’
Antin explained when we were kids
so much I learned from him I’ll never
admit
plants feed fish excrete feed plants
oxygen out of nowhere
only the sun needs helium
at the other end of its cosmos last
dream’s gentlest touch
thrill the way a bird does or morning
light
mockingbird on the bridge in rain
where herons often glide from pond to
bay
I’m gasping for breath airless in
Gaza
to see me suffer puts the leaves to
sleep.
215.
Night stuff thick
ankles of consciousness
slow drag a thickened broth
a cake of beef fat offered to birds
there are days music will not listen
means that no one hears
after a month on the sea it is hard
to be anybody else
say it with your hands the way the
night
is religion only something other
people do
glamor of the ivory corpus constantly
reminds
once there was a place where these
things mean
thank God we have to make our own.
216.
Walk over there and meet myself
departing
signs of death I cannot find my shoes
lost my heart in the Rockaways
began to think that love was made of
skin
cathedrals walk beside you when you go
I flew over the Hadramawt and Mars
looked back
the meaningless politeness of the
desert rock
the empty cup I offer to my friends
how little I’ve given, how much
proposed
littoral birds the afikomen found at
last
set me my place at the table near the
door
sometimes the sight of food makes me
despair.
Feb 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
212.
This is Book VIII of the Aeneid
we finally go inland here
where the dark river loves us
into the unknown interior of your
house
where maples hang overslow waters
when we look down to see our faces we
see nothing
the water has faces of its own
animals (this is all about animals)
begin to talk now
we write home saying “animals talk to
us now
what are we going to do with our
silences
our precious silence?” but no letters
come back
deer run right into us we can’t
understand the crows.
213.
I thought she was grieving in her
ogival cloak
her face white but when I bent to
console her
she was laughing she comforted me
she put words in my mouth I wake
half-healed
have to live this clear thing not
just know it
her word was sweet and I spoke it all
day
in the dark country where everybody
lives
keening sometimes or laughing at the
faces
peering out from the hillside ancient
still young
their skin soft as lamb’s ears pale
as mistletoe
they look as if they remember me
but who am I now?
Feb 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
Robert Kelly and Susan Quasha present their book, Winter Music, at the Kleinert Gallery in Woodstock NY, part 2 of 2
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