ROBERT
KELLY

1.
Book of the woman
lost into color,
all the revisions
of the light
shifted the shape of her
towards us and past me,
and the light knew her
like glass
so that my words
reached out and reached
out and touched
only the cold smooth of
all that she was.
And down the streets
of the dream white
mail trucks hurtled
in trafficless silence.

2.
There were three texts
that had somehow
to be compressed together–
not by picking and choosing
but through a massive silent
twist or pressure process
of its own, so that the three
would become
choicelessly one.

The texts were different colors:
one pale, two dark
and they were like shallow bowls,
pie crusts, the words clear.
I watched her hands arrange them
fitting one on top of the other,

the text was pale,
her hands paler.
Then something started
and darkness shrouded
whatever was going on.
And what came out is this.

3.
So now it’s up to me
to make something more,
not just dream smatterings.

I have to reclaim
the noble spacious distances
between all the words
of the original,
the texture of emptiness,
artifice, ligature,
the feel of forward in a classic text,
epic or animal.

I want it to be enough
to wake and see the wind in the trees,
the light forgiving me
into the timeless present,
but those images persist,

three must be one,
she must be lost
into what she has spoken
or made me speak,
lost so that the text
alone is left, and she herself
lingers in her own way
behind the glass,
smiling in her own eyes,
wind on its way.

4.
Am I done,
is the music ready?

Arsis and thesis,
where is the downbeat
that tells me to step,
to stop, the light foot
Duncan got from Bowra got from Pindar,

it’s not all dancing, is it,
my fingers clumsy at the keyboard
but the tones are true?

In holy sleep the felonies are healed,
I wake to say so, empowered
by the Lost Woman
who is everywhere, lost
from grasp into gravity itself,
I’m bantering theology,
it’s not all up to me, you know,
I’m just trying to peel apart
the baked pages and read
the book that woke me,
no cover on it but the words themselves,
I’m just trying to catch the tune,
it’s always only the tune that tells.

19 September 2020