ROBERT
KELLY

I am no one yet.
But the sun is rising
so there is connection,
nothing happening
but the light.
                            I grow,
I prosper
the tyrant said,
every tyrant, every self.

2.
Don’t quote me
said the bird
but I know something,
something useful
hidden in my song.
Don’t worry, answered
a passing car,
my lips are sealed—
and it may be
your secret runs me too.

3.
Fast break
from night bread.

Hope happens
all over town,

there is no fence
though round
this man’s song.

One more tyrant
lights the lust. 

4.
Just because I wake
I have to say.
Sunlight gold
in dimming green.

In that tattered
sleep they call waking
I remembered walking
when I was a little boy
down The Flume—a stream
quick through narrow chasm
with wet stone walls,
the air made half of water.
I distracted myself by guessing
the name had to come from Latin,
flumen, neuter, ‘river.’
But that doesn’t help.
It still felt just
like walking down into myself,
slippery stone, sloping down,
and who would I be if I fell?

5.
The mountains have changed too.
The Old Man’s face
has crumbled off the cliff.
My ancestor I thought he was
since I had known no other.
The irony is that Self Reliance
is something you get from a book.

6.
There is no pain
in being itself
but being is strange,
strange. They ease
our fears by citing Nature.
Have you ever seen nature,
even running away?

 7.

The bird was quiet then,
his gospel still.
The listening car
is in Kingston by now,
how long the telling is.
The Absolute is everywhere,
the book lies open on the table.
We call it flying.
We call them wings.

8.
Come back and comfort me.
Music should never be diversion,
ever be a version
of what you really mean,
you who flute or note it
down for someone else
to sing with her fingers
or her lips, let them say
sacred what you mean
in all the frivolous funerals of the heart
and so the slightest touch
becomes profound.
You know all this,
how strong music makes us
but we must be weak, weak
to start with
before the glory brass and strings
wake us, mountains, meanings.

19 November 2020

The move is slow
the pool is now,
like a cloud
it does not like to let you
see it move.
                           Photography
a well-known
cure for shyness.

The alarm bongs,
the sky sleeps on.

2.
Mystery of her,
sandstone syntax
in a world of shale.
O slip me freshets
squeezed tween such rock,
the planet is four-fifths water
and we thirst.

3.
What words can do to each other,
crowded bar on Friday night
or duel at dawn,
                                    o be gentle,
sentence, just for once.

4.
If a cloud
turned to stone
would it talk
like you,
tackle the intricate
messages
heartbeat by heartbeat
until even I
could understand? 

5.
The cello is silent
but the theme comes back,
flutey doorways and a wind outside,
slimmer aperture shriller tone,
the cloud is still there,
know what I mean?

6.
Do the thing and be at peace,
change your name
or I’ll change it for you,
go choose an opera,
listen soundless as you walk
half on purpose
through the dwindling wood–
all paths lead here,
this house you see
just beyond the covered well,
water maybe ripe for you.

7.
Don’t bother knowing
where you’re going—
the going knows
and that’s enough
to get you there
with lots of tales to tell.
Remember?

8.
The catapult
we called a slingshot,
the pebbles we let fly
only at things we thought
we could not hurt—
trees or boulders in the stream.
How wrong we were—
everything feels pain
only some of us complain.
The hammer once as holy as the cross.

8.
Cross?
Spirit penetrating matter,
vom Himmel hoch
the line comes down.
They meet, become
body of the perfect man
born from the heart,
the ever-virgin heart.
Something like that—
the vertical presses through
the horizontal,
heaven stands on earth.
Something like that.
The builder’s hammer,
Thursday priests,
sign in the sky. 

9.
I’m just trying to understand—
you knew I was going to say that,
I could see your lips
mouthing the words an instant
before they came out of my mouth,
everybody knows what I mean,
my great revelations
turn out to be reminders.
Clouds move slow
across the northern sky,
I can’t prove it
but they do move.

16 November 2020

When midnight comes
dig down and excavate
the hypogeum
below the heart,

that sacred space
deepest in you
you can only find
by building it.

Touch nothing there—
just the ground
you stretch out on.

Everything else down there
is not for you
but only for your sleep,
language and landscape.

By doing nothing
your work is done.
Sleep tight. Sleep bright.

15 November 2020

Glacis of the castle
trenches of the Marne
streets of Chicago
the long war winding down

we are born into an army
my uncle gassed by the Boche
my tree fell in the blizzard
what can we do

they used to call it Armistice Day
but now they say Veterans
as if the war was over
and all the troops came home

I surrender I surrender
do not make me fight

fighting is for children
grown-ups wait it out,
write it out
until the long war peters out

he coughed for the rest of his life
bigger than my father
but you could tell they were brothers

Samuel sang and Seymour coughed
and the war goes on

streets of Portland
plazas of Hong Kong,

listen to me, I don’t know
what I’m talking about,
I just know the war is ending
here and there a little,
ending slow, ending fierce,
the anger louder than the gun
but then the quiet comes
and we surrender.

2.
Plate glass windows
divide us from the sky,
protect us maybe from
breathing what we see,

what gives us light.
There is a wall around me,
the kind that lepers wore,
Unclean, unclean I cry

but do I mean I am or it is,
am I safe from it or it from me?
O glass wall of language,
plate glass of my thought!

3.
Out the back door
up over the hill
watch the mallards
possess the stream,

give up deciding,
yield to the duck
yield to the river,
surrender to everything

you do not mean.

4.
Color is the first precision.
That’s what flags are all about,
enlist in the red army,
blue army, infantry of green.
We are born into the service
as they used to call it,
servicemen and servicewomen
and whom do we serve?
Serve in the forces
armed and unarmed
and what do the forces serve?

Every day I surrender again,
I am a Prisoner of Peace
interned in the natural world,

o tree my guard, my guardian,
my chaplain, comrade, guide.
The war is almost over,
the road is almost there,
love of what is just past the world.

8 November 2020

I mean
we are
to be
and be again
all over,

so many gone
Neanderthal
Denisovan
all gone
gone into us
far as they
we can be.

2.
So why am I
telling you this
you are younger
you know it better
than I remember so
why do I clamber
to tell you,
be near you,
your sleeve
my mountain?

3.
There is no argument
between us,
just a fold of fabric,
silk or soft as.
Can cloth count?

Ask the rabbis
whose deck we stand on—
they’ll tell you
the captain’s name
but I’ll name the ocean.

4.
I can almost remember
how it began,
speckled egg pale blue,
a fox running off,

and then the woods
all quiet, page in a book.
I can almost remember
before the machine.

The dithering silence
that worried us so, so
some of us spread our legs,
some touched wire to wire,
some hummed in the corner,
broke a window
and the machine began.

5.
So many have walked
through that door
or idled chatting
in the doorway,
laughing or doubting,
leaning on the frame.
And then went in.

6.
So many have become
what we are—
but who is this ‘we’
of whom one speaks?
Time
             to be again
and never know!
Blessed silence
between the loud strokes
of the blessed machine!
All about remembering
there is nothing to remember.

4 November 2020