HEART THREAD Parts 113 & 114

113.

I’ll know the question when the
answer speaks

if you say so darling I only hear the
organ

green and white the monks’ church at
St. Gall

remarkable country for being left
alone

whoever told you there are
alternatives

remember pennies not made of copper

remember the wolf in the driveway

mockingbird on the drainpipe

I have tried to deal with everything

give every weather its place in
history

for I was Waterloo and Austerlitz

Prince Andrei dreaming by his horse’s
hoof.

114.

Your money or your life enough of
meaning

I crossed the polished lobby to the
elevators

no one I knew could live in such a place

and so I rose through bronze doors to
family problems

my own estate the sky above Manhattan

and I owned Brooklyn too and east
beyond

but not out west over the river
Jersey and America

the sky belongs to me I say and on it

I take my stand no one else can judge
or smite me

though sometimes someone else will
touch my hand

and then the sky bears witness to my
purity

purity of meaning everything in this
single touch.

ROBERT
KELLY