ROBERT
KELLY

The beak was bronze
the book was brown
hidden in a corner
dried out by time
the print too small to read

2.
A house is a tumulus
left by an ancient population
yourself five years ago
or more, or less, the winds
of time don’t care.
You’ll never find yourself in there.

3.
The beak shines still a little
what is it really
handle or hook
you’re half-afraid to pick it up,
a bird stiff as an umbrella
with its folded wings,
the print too fine
for the words it carries,
whispered into the dust,
every word a foreign language.

4.
The leather spine has fallen off,
dimly gold stamped in
Les Langues du Monde.
The book I’m looking for
nowhere to be found.

5.
That’s an oldish way of saying it
but saying’s on the old side too.
Mostly we stare at things
and wait for them to speak.

6.
Of course we belong to the house.
Man sounds like Moon.
Sun sounds like Nun,
a holy woman married
only to the One.

We make the house
the house makes us—
sounds like a children’s game
and we can’t grow up.

7.
I was looking for a book in Latin
to lend a friend, Ausonius
on his river but I found
a Bible instead. Same language,
different river. Rivers.
Come, wash yourself clean.

8.
So it doesn’t make sense
to look for what you have
or thought you had. Looking
is a quest and should be saved
for the unlikely, the distant,
the absent, the never happened.

9.
Looking for something
you don’t know what you’ll find
don’t know what you’ve found
and it’s always too dark to tell.
It’s like going to school again,
that time where we all sat around
discussing books we hadn’t read
the right way at all, not at all.

10.
So I shouldn’t have bothered looking.
If the book’s so smart
let it find me.
It can read itself
in perfect dark
better than I can
with all the watts.
I look out the window and realize
state law requires all vehicles
to use headlights even in daytime.
And now I know why.
The mind of a driver is always dark,
like someone reading a missing book.
8 May 2021

for Charlotte

burning tree above me
it lives by fire
and its leaves are not consumed.
The car is cool though,
green as the leaves
and cool gentle breeze
walks through the window
open just a sliver
to let the world in.
Could this be now
the way a mountain is?
Or did it mean a fountain?
What fables words tell,
include you as you fall
down through them
bravely listening.

2.
This morning I do not want
the continuous, I want
pearls on an invisible string,
want footsteps, staircase,
Viennese. The steps
are horses’ hooves
and it is morning. Bells
annoy the hooded crows,
rooks, doves and shadows–
hard to see with all that music.

3.
Once there was a beginning
and twice an ending came.
Three times is the charm they say
so I’ll wait here she said
until all the ending starts again.
She lay on her lawn
prone to love the loping rabbits.

4.
See how strangely
truth comes to town,
in wet clothes
carrying a flame.
Call it a church
so don’t pay taxes,
make the whole harbor
holy water, wave
the Torah to make the wind blow,
make up truth as you go along—
it’s always there,
waiting to be made.
That’s what cities are for.

5.
Read Olson and Augustine
till you believe. Nothing
more accurate in all higher
mathematics than your street address,
o sacred numbers
change them at great risk.
Once they gave a new number
to my house so now I have
two places I call here.

6.
You’ll say I’m scraping the barrel
but the barrel is gone,
winey oak and old, it tumbled
over the falls with no one in it,
bobbing down the rapids,
I watched it till it met its mother
river water and was home.
All I have is what it left
faintly on my fingers,
I kick them and say more.

7.
Cantinflas was a comedian
remember him?
cunning awkwardness
was his sly trick in trade.
And why do I mention him now?
Why do you suppose?

8.
I don’t mean to sound snarky
but the leaves are very new
the clouds are few
it’s hard to be solemn as an overcoat
even though the day is chilly
and I have translated so much
and so long from the dim
Late Latin of my sleep.

9.
An oriole
heard yesterday
by woman
told me tell
love is a call
in the sky
hear, Now.
Right now.

10.
What are we as a people?
We stand in the doorway
making sure we have our keys
before we go out, pocket
after pocket we survey, ‘check’
we say but we have never
been there before, dark after dark
and still no keys? What to do?
Go back inside or leave forever?
Or just go out and leave unlocked
and hope the house will still be here
if we ever remember to come home.

11.
Because pockets are caverns in our now,
in the tenuous geology of our day,
which way we walk or rest,
what’s hidden in them now,
mini-flashlight, komboloía,
handkerchief. Wallet. Keys.
And all the dust of our travels
and something more–the memory
of our hands and what they’ve held,
it’s like a gospel to go in theorem
so many minders of your truth–
so keep one pocket empty always
and sometimes tuck your fingers
gently in to feel what is to come.

12.
So now it’s turned
continuous–can’t have that,
go back to those beads,
feel one then let it go,
take another, then another,
don’t let your consciousness
imagine some smart string
to sling them on, no,
one and one and two
is just another one again.

13.
A woman took pictures of women
but dreamed one night about a man.
He stood with his back to her
facing the sea. So she became the sea.

14.
That’s what I mean,
the answer embedded in the question.
The smell of food cooking
nourishes something in us
that the food can’t feed.

15.
We plan an expedition
for the day. We will go
and walk across the street
to see some blue new flowers
I have never seen but you
saw yesterday and showed
a picture of them on your phone.
Or have we seen enough already?

16.
That damned pale car
is parked again among
the trees a furlong off,
our trees I want to say
because trees mean to belong
only to those who see them,
climb them, talk to them,
gratefully accept their fruit.
Trust me, I have plausible
theories about everything.

17.
Disconnect! Liberate!
Let the next
be new.
The sun is brighter now
but the air no warmer.
Is this the same day as today?
Only if you insist.

18.
So there’s my Vienna
for you, my love,
steeples and kids whirling around,
waltzes and czardases and
who knows mazurkas,
soundless this morning
so as not to disturb you,
your face so beautiful
on the satin pillow. Vienna?
Athena? A beauty in you
that wakes me the whole world.

7 May 2021

Come with me
came with him
in the soft
green shell around
the hard shell
engraved around
the fruit of the core
just soft enough
to chew: walnut,
European culture.
The king’s tree,
queen’s misery.

2.
An island is a slippery thing
even when the jags jut out
black granite from the sea.
The sea comes from all sides in
to hold it in place, lave its loss
of larger, feed its shorebirds,
ospreys, fish crows, us.

3.
I was born on one
and can’t forget,
big or small, minnow or sturgeon,
it surged its way to stand still
and still I dream that it
with me will sail away.

4.
My uncle had a tugboat
my uncle had a war
my uncle was a Mason
my uncle said his prayers in Hebrew
my uncle was a Welshman
and let me read his books,
my uncle was a garbage man
my uncle was police.
My island was a busy place
but let me go.

5.
The best thing to do with the sea
is look at it, pray to it, talk to it, listen.
Try not to cross it–
look what happened to us when we did.
Try not to do much more
than swim in it reverently
respectful of seals.

6.
Come with me he said
I will show you where the walnut grows,
I did and he did, a big old tree
beside the summerhouse
squirrels kept sneaking
the green nuts in, soft green outside
like many a friend, so many
layers to get through
to what is on the inside
as we used to say
as if the core of anyone
is a planet with its own geology
and all you get to know
is islands, islands.

4 May 2021

for Joel Newberger

Hit the ball
back at the pitcher
it will confuse
the enemy with answers

2.
the cliffs crumble yes
but not while we’re watching
there is a number
deep in every stone

3.
so I have come to
teach you how to
dance this footless
figure round the maypole
the fleeing center
that is always right here

4.
as if there were children
in the house we never see
or a genital smell seems
left on the wind.
All bodies one body?

5.
it snowed last night
up the mountain there
over the river and
the wind wild down here
you shook a tree at me
you chilled my pillow

6.
because there is only you and me
to share one world, one verb,
no room for another, you
are the other

7.
o sea thou eldest spectacle
let me visit thee again,
teach me the truths
that vision’s for,
to anatomize the bodiless
and read the minute print
of everything that writes
by moving and everything moves

8.
hear the counsellors
rapping on the door
let them a little in
it’s cold out there
or hot dry wind so
be kind as wood
kind as water listens,
every one is a messenger

9.
and every two
a common-law marriage,
let the priest sleep
o be common be
common and be true
the government alas
is our eldest son
a greedy selfish sort
mind of his own

10.
so we drank the morning
and chewed all afternoon
visitors came bearing cakes
small ones from a city
you could taste the population
thick and dark and sweet
there is no night to such a day

11.
to know the gender of the sun
is all I meant,
reverence for Her difference
light is the mother milk
come drink with me

12.
it takes so long to be quick
let me be slow
and let you go
wandering my field
it goes as far as you
feel like walking

13.
of course I try
to be a tree
for you to dance around
and you do

14.
one waits for the day
when we eat no more beasts
and live on light alone
cloud sandwiches
drizzle for dessert

15.
but so long to wait
and even now
breakfast snarling at the gate

16.
so magic is the answer
go on and on and on
the conversation drivels on
and yet you rise
wise from it and carry
wisdom into silence
to let it sing

17.
how little it takes
to make
and so we do

18.
happy May Day
to the fence and the forest
the wool and the marigold
so many challenges churches
circuses scars
so many stars
the dance is us
I say
so go and play.

1 May 2021