ROBERT
KELLY

The pebbles on Church’s Beach
all point across the bay
to the mainland, America,
insofar as round things
can point anywhere. Mostly
round. Worn by tide, time,
friction, glacial enterprise,
all the usual suspects. Last night
I learned how to unwrap
cough drops from their twisted
paper. Paper is supposed to be
just for writing on. Cellophane
was made for secular occasions,
paper for sacred. Writing
manifestos, wiping the body,
dabbing tears from lovers’ eyes,
all the holy things. The beauty
of pebbles is they do all our
counting for us–no numbers needed,
the beach accepts the sea.
The vacant lot across the street
possessed a deep declivity
as if an old foundation planned,
just deep enough for us
on snowy days to sled down
not far but fun, micro-alpine
pleasures in the city, or more
truly towards the city’s edge–
we had the last candy store
before the marshes on the sea.
The way pebbles roll.
This is the enactment of the play
the characters asleep in the script,
the actors relaxing in the room
they call Eden, innocence and wine
until cast out into the next act
and whoever they are vanishes
into whomever they must be.
Become. Please keep listening.
You hear the pebbles rolling
down the sidewalk, one of them
caught in your sneaker, digit
on a digit, don’t count, get it out–
you are suzerain of your shoes.
Banish interlopers, those numbers
from the banker’s bench, those
guesstimates of lethal sciences,
silence, look at the sea.
That’s Massachusetts over there
and Rhode Island in your left hand,
life of danger, merry-go-round
in Rockaway, hear the music,
calliope knows best, rub two
between your palms, pebbles,
and feel the rhythm of creation–
do we create what we behold?
The bus stops across the street,
the subway five blocks away,
see what life is like?
We are children of the distances,
no mama but the waking light,
day is here, go do it all again.
Stone by stone it signifies.
But you have to read it—that’s
the hard part. Here, let me
show you how. Ox. House. Camel.
Door. Window. Man asleep
on a blanket on the floor.
The alphabet holds us together
pebble by pebble. As many
as it takes to fill up a figure
irregular in shape, a hip or a
hummock on a hillslope, how
can we measure the inner
meanings of what we see?
We see curved space with straight
line eyes—that is our religion
from the start, Karahan, Jerusalem.
Hold firm, a generous hand often
has gaps between the fingers—
through those pebbles tend to fall
you end up with fewer stones now
than you thought, but did you ever
count them? Not then, not now,
it’s still New Bedford over there,
the best ice cream on Ile-St-Louis,
pebbles, always more pebbles
until the mind is done. Exalted
over the plain, smiling like lavender
on the slopes by Cavaillon, river
after river until the word is said.
Even then it’s hard to hear—
imagine Aeneas trudging upstream
on foot for once, boat and sea
far behind him, us I mean, imagine
the long walk to get where we are.
Aren’t we refugees from a lost city,
pebbles in our pockets, there must
be a place up ahead, place for us,
stones too yearn to come home.

The weather walks away.
Another century
meant something else,
the sway of beast back
sloping through the field
but we, ah we
are abstract materialists,
we chant silently,
carry images of images
softly from now to then.
And then is very far.

2.
Subs have periscopes
but what have we?
The weather only
hints at what’s around us,
what’s to come.
And when the weather walks away
we sit indoors, transcribing
ignorance into interesting books.

3.
Century after century.
I was a Roman augur once,
haruspex, bird flight,
not very good at it but still
it was a job, and every day,
weather has no weeks,
the birds keep coming back.

4.
In the tile rooves of Provence
the dormice live, little
animals called ‘sleepers’
harmless as a beast dare be.
And in thatched rooves
even more at home.
And where do we sleep
at peace, beneath which roofs?
I like the old word best,
makes me feel young again–
in Brooklyn we had rooves when I grew up.

5.
Enough geography.
It’s Christ Mass day
(speaking of old words)
and the spell-checker
gives me a hard time.
I want the word the way it was
when He was still in it
and we could hear it,
if not His name at least
the adjective they knew Him by.

6.
Because language is our weather.
The storms of it release
sometimes a simple day,
call it whatever you like,
a quiet now tucked inside
the rush of onward. A word.
Maybe somebody’s true name.
But I would never tell.

7.
Noon on Christmas day.
The snow has melted.
The rams and ewes
and lambs and wethers
are safe snug over the hill.
The Magi have come and gone,
a hint of frankincense
left in their wake. Or is it myrrh
from a new-endangered tree?
Or is it the air itself?
Slowly the light is coming back.

1.
Everything nearby.
Aeneas on the river
moving inland
past the white swine,
a sign. We have brought
so little with us
yet everything is here.
The story holds your hand.

2.
Breccia, yes? And a frozen pond.
Mild winter bur in the shallows
some. We lost our countries
and found this. Who invented
slavery? The Greeks had it,
takes so long to lose it. Even now.

3.
Imagine a monk
in dark red robe.
He lets the color
rise up inside him
till he feels a quiet
fervent love
for everyone.
Color is a prayer.

4.
Not the site of Rome
but upstream a little
He came and saw
and left the place alone.
A woman lived there,
ancestor of the man next door.
You hear his car start up
most mornings. You wonder
how much of who he is he knows.

5.
Millennia, that’s what it means,
three thousand years in Italy.
You see him in his backyard,
wears moccasins just like you.
I know so much I can’t say a word.