ROBERT
KELLY

              Paul Blackburn, in memoriam

Trying to keep up with the alphabet
but there are so many letters
running before me,
deer through the cornfield,
blackbirds over the roof
too quick to count,
your breath beside me.
Letters, letters all,
God’s cursive scribbled on the sky,

2.
and when we shake hands
does every finger consent
to this mild argument,
the book of peace
opened to the chapter called now?

3.
The letters,
not just the ancient
ox-house-camel procession
from Egypt into the Holy Land

but all of them, every mark
shouting from the stone,
long before the privilege of print.

The law runs this way:
once you learn to read,
everything is a book.
Once you learn language,
everything speaks.

4.
So learning a finite language
(Gaelic, Zulu, Thai) means learning
to leave things out, how
not to hear certain sounds,
means casting out meaning
from most of what you hear or see,
and narrow-squinting on some few.

5.
So every given language
is a subtraction from the whole
of what is being said?
Sounds like that. Means
run faster, ride the horses
of sounds, surf the waves of sight,
always more to be said.

6.
Are we there yet?
is what every breeze says,
Yes, yes cries every leaf
until it falls.

That’s the song I heard
written on the lawn.

7.
It began again
with the horns of Zeus
the god came riding
to your house, knocked
on your door, you watched
from the window.
And then what did we do?
He called out to us his law:
Death is not an option,
then Everything means
and then rode on. Leaving
all the rest of the letters,
uncountably many, all of them
needing to be spoken
alone and in concert,
all round us the music,
the ancient masters gesturing,
urging us to strive
into the dance, the whirlwind,
the breathless moment of calm
we yearn for and call meaning.

                                                       31 July 2020

                                            for Charlotte

I don’t think I’ve ever told you
how much it moves me,
deeply, quietly
that you make the bed every day
so neatly, so if I pass
through the bedroom
anytime thereafter, there it is,
eloquent and civilized,
covers turned down,
pillows luxuriant.

*
Why is marital
so like martial?
We never fight—
discuss sometimes,
but never fight.
Mars must have blessed us
by misspelling.
I love to talk with you.

*

Sometimes
when I’m sitting there
letting thinking
have its own way,
such a child the mind is!

sometimes then you’ll
be translating on the laptop
on the sofa, on the latest
of all your books
and you’ll read out to me
a phrase especially pleasing
or especially puzzling
or both, we love chimeras,

and I will exult at this gift,
this exit visa from my thoughts
into the great world
of language and the other
and your voice, your voice.
                                                           31 July 2020

The kind of chaos
that takes care of you.
A cloud does that
in one way, the woman
in white at the Qatar
Bakery does in another.
She gives you sweet buns
with sesame seeds on them,
lets you pay later. Red
letters on the window.
Haven’t you ever wondered
why clouds are mostly white?

2.
There is summer in my hair,
a strange feeling as if
my hair was someone else’s

pure as your face, warm, austere,
symmetrical, in repose.

3.

AFTER
a metaphor borrowed from time

Thus the title and the subtitle
of the book I wrote in sleep–
to analyze who people really are
and what they mean, unknown
to themselves, that is what all
the rest of us are for, to see
you as you cannot see yourself.
So it’s one more commentary
after all on Exodus,
each of us takes a turn
being God, passes by
all the rest of us
who get to see who
and what that Passerby is.

4.
If a whirlwind
stopped moving
but still was
what is it,
what would it say?

5.
Reverence
immense,
due
from all of us
to all of you
who are us too.

6.
And the Bible says so too,
treat everyone like God,
you can’t go wrong.

7.
Now back to the cloud—
this is an opera, after all.
Perfect cumulus
over perfect green
the song sings.
The lawnmower is at lunch,

there is a throbbing in the pit,
the orchestra at bay,
a few violas and one cello
passing the time of day.

8.
What a friend a window is! —
only self-revealing when you choose to look.
And you’ve never seen a window drunk,
and only rarely does a window
look frightened, rarely,
like the eyes of the girl in the bakery
as she looked at me and came to help.
                                                     20 July 2020

The truth of the matter
is matter itself
said Goethe in a dream
so I woke and wrote it down.
You need so many lies
to tell the truth.

                                   29.VII.20

Teach the pilgrim
a new dance.
You make the music,
the dance called standing still,

staying right here,
sitting on the lawn
loving the daffodils
till they fade,
                             then loving
the irises till they wilt
then loving the rose of Sharon
and it’s almost autumn,

slip inside and watch the leaves
strip from the trees and float
past you till the snowflakes
sift down so beautifully,
each one a crystal message,

now the world is white
as a page and you can finally
write down your journey
and be at peace. Sleep now,
this is Jerusalem.

                                            29 July 2020