ROBERT
KELLY

The white wall
followed us
as we walked
up into the hills,
we came to a chapel
where some sort of priest
was chopping dead branches
so you took it into your head
to go to confession to him
and you began.
                                   The wall
looked on. I tried
not to overhear
what you took to be your sins,
I know what I know
and don’t need your innocent fantasies.
When you stopped mumbling
the priest mumbled something in turn,
in some other language.
Then he said what sounded like
he had never seen an American on his knees before,
then he went back to chopping wood
and the wall moved forward,
uphill still, and we followed,
anxious to read our shadows
moving on it as we walked.

2.
A wall is a friendly comrade,
doesn’t need food, holds tight
to all the light it can, a white
wall especially. You and I were
lucky to have one for a friend.
We thought at first that it
was with us, then realized
after a few miles that we
were with it, it guided us
uphill by the gleaming
glamor of its emptiness.

3.
We were at the hilltop now,
a few boulders scattered about,
evidence some glacier past
had shaped this land. Xenoliths
you remarked, foreign stones
I understood. The wall rested.
I wanted to know why
you had told the priest so much
you never told me, did you want
me just to overhear so as not
to have to respond? No, you said,
I was talking to the wall, wanted
our wall to know the company it’s keeping.
But don’t you know, I said,
a wall knows everything?
Every person near a wall
leaves his full history in it.

4.
You doubted that. I admit
my statement was extreme—
no flowers and no birds,
no pretty people gamboling on imagined lawns,
just the sense of things sinks in,
the sense of us, Bach’s music
deep in the walls of that Leipzig church.
Speaking of priests.

5.
I suppose I was right.
I suppose the wall would have stopped me
if I said wrong—
A wall is a most truthful friend,
couldn’t even lie if it tried.
And it doesn’t try. So you and I
are left with our xenoliths and the sky
while the wall breathes patiently
alongside. It will rain soon,
I think, please, wall, take us home.

6.
Not so fast—rain loves you too
the wall explained. And think
how I will glisten as
rain sleeks me down!
You haven’t even heard
the question yet—
how will you know it
when the answer comes?
Stay here with the sky,
stay here with me,
a wall is the only real thing
humans ever made,
a silence in the endless song,
a comma in the unending sentence–
forgive my eloquence,
it’s all I have.

7.
So we remained.
It rained, and we remembered.
The wall indeed was lovely
in shimmering, awash with downpour.
We kept to the lee side of the wall
that kept us wet but not drenched,
The wall itself had some
colloquy with the wind,
the way they do, arguing,
the wind toying gladly angry
with each new obstacle
while we shivered.
You were glad
you had gone to confession.
I wished I had some sins to confess—
I thought about what sins
I would have liked to have committed
until the rain stopped.
We shook our clothes, tried
to act normal, followed the wall
downhill this time, the wall
speaking to us of a river,
a river that was to come.

24 March 2021

of a tree
they used to say
who now say trunk,
every word
says more than itself,
every stick points two ways.
Come with me
and say this mass of clay.

2.
Rivers are silver, some,
rivers are blue,
there was an arm of the sea
wrapped round where I lived
color of dark jade.
Oil they said
made it so
and things unclean
but I believed the color
so I grew.

3.
But that’s just personal,
and words somehow
live somewhere else,
in me and not me,
and they all come from
the ocean we call you.

4.
Suppose a Chinese bowl
celadon green
we watch in a museum
making the light quiver
inside the glass showcase.
Have you come
to fill that bowl with longing
the guard asks.
And then we wake.
Everything is still there.
Here.

5.
Look it up in a book,
a book is full of them,
maybe not the one you want
but maybe something
twice as far or even true
or even looking straight at you.

6.
And we think birds are simple!
See them in the tree or in the sky
and don’t even bother to specify,
just birds, daytime things with wings.
And dare to call it poetry.

7.
Do you smell something like complaint,
snuffy, like a bit of wrapper
caught in the burner
or something stuck
to the bottom of the pan?
It disperses slowly
but is still there minutes after
the gas is turned off.
Leave the range. Open a window.
Think of all the states you visited
and why you left some out.
Forgive me, Montana, I was so close,
oro y plata you said
and I still believe.
No more complaints.
Climb the bowl. Unpack the tree.
I am, I am everybody else.

8.
Abide a bad abode?
Ad for adobe, go,
do like Egypt,
do like Arizona.
A mass of clay
shaped to shelter
in its manyness
a single house.
You get the picture—
start now.
You’ll never know
where this word goes
until you get there.
Even then a tree tends
to have a mind of its own.

9.
We and words
have different meanings,
crystal on our watch,
pool of eager applicants
no fish in sight.
Help me through this busy night,
the mass is ending
but the prayer sneaks on.
So I leave you with all
I cannot say, all that you
eternally know full well.

20/21 March 2021

Sometimes strangers come,
hoot like an owl but you
let them in anyway, why not,
you’re not a mouse or a vole
to be scared of an owl, you
are the whole parliament
and sanhedrin together,
you are a human brain as usual
hungry for the next thing
to happen around you. To you.

2.
If birds left tracks in the sky
not just the snow, this would all
be clearer. But it’s left to me
to explain. Who said so?
And to whom? I hope to you
so you will be patient
with my explanations.

3.
Plural because there are so many.
History, Chemistry, Religion,
the whole junior-college curriculum
waiting for your fastidious appetite
so characteristic of the laity.

4.
Don’t be insulted by my song,
it’s the best we flightless fauna
can achieve, breastless mammals, men.
Language means to simplify the sky,
complicate the tangled forest,
bring peace to the writhing candle flame
and still keep its light.
Language is wind.
Maybe that’s who makes
that whooing sound at the door—
I am the next word that comes along—
come, follow me.

5.
But it’s you of course
to whom the language
tries to reach, touch,
bring together with
all your secret kinfolk
in this jigsaw puzzle
we call the world.
To bring you all your husbands
and a thousand wives,
tower in the desert, cave in the hill,
all your wishes flourishing
lush lavender fields by Cavaillon.

16 March 2021

Staggered terraces
behind us now,
crossing the sand
in almost no moonlight,
stepping word by word
strong as we can.
And you are the river
I’ll have to swim
to get to the other side.

2.
That’s my true home,
I belong wherever I’m not.
Hence journey, quest,
and all that secret pilgrimage
that keeps me where I am.

3.
One of the princely Livingstons
built his house on the west
bank of the Hudson, so far away
it took him so long to come
back across that he missed
the big gathering for Lafayette.
So they called his house Wrongside,
the name stuck, the house stands,
they brought me to it
the first day I came to this place
sixty years ago and made me come back.

4.
Carl Sauer insists that humans
are littoral creatures,
live on seacoasts and riverbanks.
And we know that for people
who live on any shore
the other side is the one that counts,
comes in their dreams,
summons their feeble ships to cross.
The other side is real
and where we are is just an accident,
oasis at best, be careful
of the water, only the trees
really know how to stay.

15-16 March 2021

Alley guard
morning glories vining
up the cinderblock wall
we kept our car
in one of those
profile of Chief Pontiac
facing into the dark.

2.
Enough of memory,
be instead
the child again
you thought you were
instead of now
when you sit and think
what would I do if I were me?

3.
Child be,
grammarless and lost,
one summer morning in the mountains
it was 32 degrees,
the poor rattlesnake
coiled on the big boulder
in sun to keep warm.
That is how we learned
numbers and cross the road
and run away.

4.
The futility of childhood
is proved by what happens next.
Look at your so-called friends–
can you imagine any one of them
as a child? Childish maybe
but an actual kid? Never.
The child you were
is your lost Messiah–
pray for the Second Coming.

5.
Parousia
they call it
where they jive
about such things,

when the real comes back
from all the places you have been.
Don’t blame me
for my messy theology–
I was a child once
and it sticks to my hands.

6.
All this from the empty alley
where Mr. Hoffman walked his collie
and I learned the names
of a few flowers
that lasted ever after,
pussy-willow pansy rose.
An alley was a secret street
the houses hid,
cars came to their garages
left the pavement free.
Tricycles and tin wagons.
Once I saw my Brooklyn alley
in Chicago and suddenly
a heartbeat told me
an alley is the noblest street
because it always leads right here.

7.
To be honest,
memory is a big thick sweater
it’s hard to tug off
so you can feel on your bare skin
the chill of now.
Sunday. Cold. No child in sight.

7 March 2021

I have to talk about
whatever tells.
I knock on your door,
three thuds like a Freemason
and you reveal.

The open door says come in,
I enter the mystery,
the uncanny darkness of
the next words to be said.

Speak, I whisper,
and the hallway mirror
shivers with a little light
as if it could see the sound—

who really knows all
the human senses know,
it’s all whistling in the dark.
Or not so dark now, I see
a light upstairs, dim steps,
shadows I could climb.
What language am I in,
what word is this house?

I rub my palms together
and remember sunshine.
Houses don’t just happen,
somebody must have planned all this,
could it be me?
                                    Be
careful what you say
when you’re alone in the dark.
Anything happens. Walls
windows doors terraces
flowering borders deep wells
stone fences. Distant vista.

Where am I now?
Foot of the stairs I will not climb,
feel the carpet underfoot,
lush, from northern Persia,
I can feel the ochre and the madder,
the curved colors writhing
towards a sudden incalculable peace.
I feel sleepy in this word.
Isn’t anybody here?
Bring me coffee, bright
kitchen somewhere not too far?
Fluorescent sandwiches,
microwave mazurkas, life?

Where is life?
Some words have pets
but no cat here. No children,
that’s stranger. No one but me.
If I could find a bedroom
I would sleep, but most
houses keep that sort of thing
up the very stairs I will not climb.

No, no, no. I’m down here
for a reason. From carpet
to bare wood my feet
find the way, polished floor,
hallway, and it too seems
to have a little light at the end.

But I have traveled long enough this night,
here I am and here must linger,
like music on some radio
you can’t find to turn off.

6 March 2021

Centerbeam
word walk
over the gulf
of nothing said

cantilevered
by sunrays bent
always a little
too much to ignore

so we assemble
the stones
whoever we are

stone stone stone
no book is our law

rejoice!

It all remains to be said,
needle and thread,
bare arm and smile,

simchas the Jews say,
celebrate that.

2.
There is a vegetable garden near,
but not much ripe yet in it,
crisp kale at your service
even in the snow, but still
you can walk there, treading
lightly on the future,
the future,
the thing we dare to call
the dirt beneath our feet.

3.
So often the machine
seems to know
what I am thinking.
Out stream the words,
topple stone on stone
till much has been spoken
but little said–
some things it is not wise to say.

4.
Vaccine at last.
Woman with the needle,
even her mask can’t hide her smile,
right arm or left she asks
I answer and the point
goes painlessly in,
hydrate, hydrate she says
so off I go with my wife
who gave me the whole ocean.

5.
See what I mean about gulfs and silences?
Come dance with me a waltz of guesses,
a czardas of near misses–
we will never get
all the way there
that’s what it means
to dance, to go on.

6.
Polyverse seems just perverse,
look what we’ve done with the one we have…
universe must mean a single verse,
one line of a poem that never ends.
Read your line deeply
then shout it out.
We always need more weather.

7.
Roof I mean,
roof may be root,

build from the roof down,
the crest knows
all that comes below

as from the sky
we maybe came.

5 March 2021

1.
Triple city
of the four-fold heart,
the five fingers
Olson found everywhere,
jawohl, I animate these bones,
animal I am,
inside the three cities inside me.

2.
Now say it in English—
I am the dark that lures such light.

3.
Love Compassion Wisdom
three spires you have to climb
on your own bare feet,
no elevator, nothing to lift you
but the thought of others:
other people, other beings,
ordinary things to love
and care for and understand.
Finally at the very top you see
the whole city where you began.
A simple gospel brought you here
but the swallows do not laugh.

1 March 2021

Meaning comes at you
snowplow at dawn
roaring the road clear
meaning has at you
in the old ways, swordplay
of contrary ideas.

2.
So soliferous, the woman
bearing the sun,
open the blinds, roll
away the stone. Morning
is the first idea–
now what to do
with all you dreamt,
wordless images of
parts of bodies, parts of trees,
o blessed blank white wall.

3.
You have to take
all the things you thought
or thought you saw
and fill your arms with them
and drop them in the well.
The water of will never fail.

4.
Why is he mail?
All questions and no answers.
Spread them on the table,
on the screen. Analyze the obvious.
Sweep them together, turn
off the device. No meaning
in what we say to each other,
the meaning waits, lurks,
deep in the body of the sayer.
Come towards me now! you
cry to the empty air.

5.
The next part of meaning is a stone.
You pick it up and hit with
or build a wall.
You decide. If wall,
you’ll need a roof on it.
If hit, you’ll need to run away.
This is your education.
I want to say History
is pebbles on the shore
of an unknown ocean—
can I get away with that?

6.
There are consolations, though,
for meaning. Words
flutter from my lips,
paintings from your fingertips,
et cetera. I feel like Byron in a bassinet,
not quite sure what I mean.
Morning is such a pretty child,
round eyes briefly wide.

7.
These are tales
the snowplow told,
curves and mounds
and sudden falls,

Kipling now I climb
your hills again
Darjeeling, garden
of the thunderbolt, dorje ling
tool in a strong hand.

8.
On days like these
colors get lost—
that’s what meaning means.
You woke with low green hills
like Neolithic mounds
left by only God knows who.
Yet each hill is still alive, green
I wonder where winter went.

9.
And then the kettle
as they say sings,
and morning has its clothing on
and we have to be ready,
ready, ready. Everything
is on its way all over again–
you know that song,
fierce chorus that ends
your favorite opera The Night.

23 February 2021

Stone sledge
drag the mountain
to the village,
what is a henge,
a kope uplifted
to surround a mystery
suddenly when
you’re in it utterly known.
Sunrise and evening star
because we are,
and are of their nature
as any stone can tell you,
the bigger the louder,
always stand in the center.

2.
Or in your backyard
a dial of pebbles
will sing the same song
you just have to
listen harder.
A snail sails under a leaf
fast enough for this still sea.

3.
At a certain point in life
you have to make everything up yourself
before the extern certainties
swarm back in—
a day without a book or a device,
you’re all alone with the swaying
seductive dances of your guesses.
Does x really imply
a history of y?
And is B true daughter of A?
Nobody knows,
so you must be Nobody now
and declare all by myself
all the roots and branches.

4.
Stand by the stone and say
Stone, stand by me.
Lean on it if it lets you
and confess:
I am not Nobody
but I am Nobody’s father
and I leave this grotto to my son.

5.
The stone will laugh
a little at that
the way they do—
you can feel it in your fingertips.
Or pick the pebble up
and bring it everywhere.

22 February 2021