ROBERT
KELLY

On some sofa beside me
almost a song, lifted a leaf
of as if it were sheet music
we used to say, innocent score,
fumbling hands. I was alone
with a piece of paper
what could I do but read it,
and it was blank, so
what could I do but write?

2.
That’s not how it began,
it feels like that still.
The triangulation: muscles
moving in the fingers,
mechanism of the keyboard
object moving in space—
and the sound coming out.
In this triangle someone
could find a self and spend a life.

3.
But it didn’t happen that way too.
You were always with me–
you being the shape of the other,
the answering voice I needed to answer,
the mountain across the river,
you absolute horizon.

4.
That’s closer to how it began.
How I began. Before that
the crowded waiting room
called childhood, where the one
lesson is to learn to be alone.
At least until the mountain comes along.

5.
Now we’re all here together,
naked in history,
learning to read
by finding the secret lover
in every book,
childhood is a state that never ends.

6.
Time to join
the whirlpool and the wolf,
the hunger and the hurry.
Take in as you are taken in
until you reach the quick
(means living) center of time
(means now) (and you means me).

7.
So on this altarpiece is shown
the transubstantiation
of time to space, space
is what we always have,
space loves us, time
is just an accident of travel,
space loves us, sits always
beside us on the sofa,
stretches out with us in bed,
walks to the corner store with us,
helps us find the mountain,
lets us lean against the tree
and fish in our pocket,
that special space, to find
whatever strange thing it is
we think we need. It’s there
all round me. It holds my hand.

                                                       4 August 2020

Haydn wrote a symphony a day
for a hundred days
but the days weren’t all together,
depending on the weather,

sometimes it takes a year
to reach tomorrow.
The last ones are the days
I like best, say 98 to 104,

but who am I? And who was
Haydn anyhow, father of many?

                                                      3 August 2020

Did Audubon do animals?
I want to see his wombat,
echidna, hippopotamus.

Mozart wrote secret
music for the birds—we all
know that, and Beethoven
gave intelligence to thunder.

So who will sanctify by art
the woodchuck at our fence,
the streak of sunlight
running down our door?

Everything is trying to get in!
O a girl is a gospel of oyster shells,
a boy is a minor felony, grow up,

grow up and be God at least
the way everything else is,
permanent, mysterious and true.
                                                         3.VIII.20

And is the beautiful blue sky
somebody’s lie too,
some raptor of feelings
hunting your heart?

Think not. Color
may be the only truth.
Pay your taxes and decide
what the wind is telling you,

the green wind of August
that hides in the sky.
In your next life
you’ll be an admiral—now

calm down and let me rest.

                                                  3 August 2020

It said nothing
then it spoke.
The silence and the saying
sounded same
but the difference was
I understood.

2.
The calendar shifted
to keep up with the sun,
her balance act of day and night.
Old Lammas slipped
a dozen dawns down
and now we know a new one
come over the hill,
naked in cornfields, raft
of cloud overhead,
angels of air looking
emptily meaningfully down,
soon the harvest begins.

3.
There are still errors
left for me to make—
times and titles,
answering the wrong questions,
writing the wrong book.

4.
The world as is
wants to be loved.
Doesn’t mind
a little flirtation
with the Pleistocene
but come back soon.
Now is now. Now
is when you count.

5.
So it’s wonderful on summer days
the way plump clouds come up
slow over the trees and speak.
It’s quiet enough to write down
what they say. Just pay attention
to the vowels and the consonants
will take care of themselves.

6.
So let the vowels lead you
all the way,
the enormous vowel of the sea
will bear you on,
we know that from today’s birthday,
Melville, master of energetic
triumphant loneliness.

7.
But in Xhosa there are 18
consonants, mouth sounds
maybe like what we make
when talking to horses or to poultry
or try to write down as tsk-tsk or tut-tut,
sounds waiting to be used,
always something new from Africa
the Romans said, remember?
Remember Rome, the Christians
in the Colosseum, the old emperor
studying Etruscan, Princess Julia
naughty in the Arches, remember
the sounds of ghosts, goats,
flute players, the river slipping by,
let the vowels help you remember.

8.
Who are we anyway
if the calendar can change?
The little boy asked that
standing in the surf
with his little tin shovel in hand,
as if eager for the sand.
Who are we even
when the wind dies down
or when the crows in the corn
look at us but don’t call out?
Or when the cars pass up the road
too fast for us to see who’s driving,
who are we when the night falls down—
why do they say it falls?
The little boy lets one question
distract him from another.
Good little boy. Now he bends
and starts building his castle.

9.
Lammas is Saturday this year,
no mowing, please.
Just bend down and kiss the grass
given to us by the Lord of Time,
let it grow wild the whole afternoon,
wait and eat your breakfast in the dark.

10.
Clouds mostly teach silence
but sometimes they roar,
chide the delinquent
messengers we are.
Their silence means to make us speak–
that in a way is the whole story.
If you doubt me, ask any stone.

                                             1 August 2020