ROBERT
KELLY

All the blue camels
the bright red oxen,
the green mules,
o and the drivers,
riders, grooms and guides,
they are all colors too.

2.
So the rocky desert rang
with so many hooves,
sandstone echoing—
you could hear them coming
from a mile away
if you were there.
But you were not there.

3.
No. You were riding, tall
on a camel of your own,
salt mules slogged along
around you, you like it slow,
keep the animal spirit low,
give the camel a chance
to think as he steps along.
And his slow pace gives you
the quiet music all
travelers need to sort out
the tumbled archive
of their memory mind.

4.
The god of going had made sure
there are many oases on this route.
Almost every night you came to water,
wafture of sweet fruit trees, soft lively
shade after all those stony shadows
the desert is so loud with. Hurry,
you’re here. Slip off the beast, let it
fossick on its own, you stretch out flat
in the glad horizontal of the night.

5.
You’d almost think I’m following you,
spying on routine, daring to evaluate
somebody else’s reality—it would be
just like me. But I’m not. My days
of traveling are mostly past, I’m happy
to sit and watch you from afar.
But even from here I can hear
the clinking of the camel bells, the sand
they shuffle through, your own sighs
when every now and then even you
wish it could all go faster, even you
grow impatient with what’s now.

6.
I suppose that must be why
you climbed on the camel
to begin with. Like so many,
you allowed yourself to think
that now means here, and some
place past the horizon would be
a better now to be in. The camel
could have told you otherwise
but he’s just along for the ride.

7.
I know the feeling,
that’s how I got here
too, though to be honest
I never had an animal,
I had to walk the whole way
from the bed to the window
and taking deep breaths
go all the way to the door.
Where I’ll be waiting when
some fine day you’ll slip
off the camel’s back and tap
half timidly on that ancient wood
and all the words in the
world will let you in.

6 August 2020

The precious routines

of solitude,

                      bird on a branch

saying nothing,

meaning everything.

The eyes are given to us

to open and to close–

madness means forgetting this.

                                            5.VIII.20

No answer yet.
Pineapple slices from the can
so neatly cored,
yellow ciphers,
the terrible sweetness
of logical things,
the song of zero.

2.
Listen, I tell myself again,
a train goes by,
every night
about this hour,
never exactly the same minute,
freedom is not far,

3.
then why is the train going
and why did it come back
to go again and again
while only the horny and the hungry
are awake to hear it,
busy themselves with its meaning,
the far cities,
the forests of why?

4.
No answer yet
but nothing bores the questioner,
on and on, all night long,
sleep is just another form of it,
sleep is asking.

5.
Of course the night
tries to answer you,
always has, since you were a kid
in a railroad flat in Cypress Hills,
windowless bedroom
cross on the wall,
the dark did all it could.
It lurked and listened—
I think that was enough,
taught me to wait in the dark.

6.
So that the joyous morning
was always a kind of disappointment,
a fruit too sweet, too bright,
too new, and me a clumsy pharisee
hugging the scraps of the law,
the dry leaves left from dream.

7.
I.e., poetry. Who’s there?
Did the chest of drawers
shift in the dark?
Why does the floor creak?
Who is your mother?
sometimes I dared to ask the dawn,
Guessing at the answers
no one would give.

8.
Yes, there were windows,
but they were far away.
Even in the kitchen the table
was as far as could be from the light,
there was a war on, I drank my milk
and ate white bread, I understood
that much at least
about time and history,
eggs are oval, fruit is round,
any minute they’ll make me
go to school.

9.
                                 The feeling
does not change. it reeks
of morning still. No answer
comes apart from what we do,
every minute of our lives
is our attempt to answer
nobody’s question.
And nobody is the most
important one there is.

                                       5 August 2020

There is no ocean here

to tell me what to do.

Time unwraps something

with its hands.  I stretch

my arm through a month

to find tomorrow.  Water

or not, that is always the way.

I am here to obey.

                               5 August 2020