ROBERT
KELLY

Itchy creases
Mojave folds
o making movies
is a desert art,
coughing up
images out of emptiness,
borrowing darkness
so we can see.

2.
Green cheap floral pattern
flaps around her knees,
the wind.
Her legs are dirty,
mud-stained calves,
but where did the water come from,
or is it blood?
In mind-stained emptiness
we see what she sees,
footprints leading away.

3.
No faces yet.
Image is not identity,
image is the other
singing at us
from across the canyon,
arroyo,
river of no water.
An image is all beckoning,
questioning,
a catechism, a mid-term exam,
an image is a question
that no one asks.

4.
We are left with what we see,
as that woman must be,
alone in the desert
where movement is implied
by absences alone.
The mesa vanishes.
The hawk is gone.

5.
It is as when we dream
we wake with a single
image in mind,
nowhere to go with it,
no one to take it away.
Get up out of bed, that
theater of the night,
shake my head,
the green cloth flipping,
whose footsteps are they,
where did they go?

                                         17 August 2020

So sometimes less to say
dome of the white church
reflected in the canal
so green was the water that day,
the Christian boatmen
jogging on the shore
o lift me over river
they sang, lift me
over canal, let the dolphins
sway me to the altar
where the chaplain waits,
the man with such tight boots—

but I knew what they meant,
song always means the same thing. 

2.
We learn it early
the East is not a river
the Hudson is
but flows through the sea
by the time we get to know it.
We live on an island,
America is just across the bay.
Paumanok, island of skeptics
who in desperation if not despair
take to song.
                           Make
language pure again,
sing it to sleep.

3.
This is all about
theories of education.
Here is mine:
Surround the child with everything
and leave it alone.
Because you know by now
everything talks.
Silence is fierce listening. 

4.
Forgive me,
I have opinions
which are even
worse than ideas.
It takes hard work
to get rid of them,
purify yourself
from what you think.

5.
And you don’t need to be a Platonist
to climb over that fence—
it’s made of stone
but crumbling, light
shows through it where
you get a glimpse beyond–
a breathless moment, hoist,
and you’re over it
on virgin ground. 

6.
Cool first time this morning,
speaking of over,
my bare skin reminds me
autumn may yet be coming,
not yet, not soon, but some
day I will close this window
and the wasp will have to
fly away hummingly home.

7.
The dome could have been
in Williamsburg or Venice or India,
the canal anywhere,
but the river had to be here,
has to be here
where you hear it,
words can’t lie by themselves
you know, it takes me
or you to skew them, no,
the river has to be here,
running past, running fast,
running to keep true.

8.
Only the dome stays
more or less where it is,
where we see it shimmer
in swift current, lingering,
but notice how the image
has to keep trembling
to stay still. We do it too
and call it breathing.
The dome on the ground
we guess is behind us,
it doesn’t budge, we call it a church.

                                                     16 August 2020

It could be anything
it could be the weather
a tiger back in Yunnan
missing the regular
meals in the zoo
up there in the days when
we are all let go, set loose,
lost into the prowl of
it could even be now.

2.
But burdens slip off too
thud by your ankles so
lighter you limp on.
We all in one way or another
seem to be teenagers
coming back from the pool,
wet bathing suits inside our clothes.

 3.
That’s how we know.
Conscience molds us,
the process called time
shapes us old.
Acute awareness
of random realities,
the longer the leaner.

4.
I wish I could remember
all the places I hurried from,
all the books I read midway,
all the breakfasts I skipped,
all the music I turned off before the end.
Last night a Bach partita—
but which one?
Through the silence
I prayed my way to sleep.

 5.
The tiger is still in his cage,
maybe alas. The meadows
of Somerset lie low in late sun.
I keep getting born around here
but here keeps changing.
Brighton Beach. Alston
in the Pennines, highest town
in England, sorrow, sorrow,
the lead mines all closed down.
So there is still silver in the ground–
that’s what they mean when they say
being born is a consolation prize.

6.
Noises spoke us
alert in the dark.
Language everywhere,
no breath without its word.
No air without its breath.
We tried to understand what it meant
but it did not speak again.
What could the night possibly want
after all that we have given it?

7.
Little tufts of freedom
here and there,
enough to feed your rabbit
of a soul, your dribbling river
of a single tear. Try, try
to make me say something
you can understand
under or over all this mumble
of my guesswork.
It’s up to you to make me speak.

8.
Eden? Yes,
but there was no love there,
no passion, no embrace.
It was a glade of soft obedience—
and sometimes we pray to God
we still could be there,
make do with flowers and the changing light.

                                  15 August 2020

The sadness was all in me.
Outside was its ordinary self,
oranges and mirrors, blueberries
and wolves, nothing special,
you know the song
and nowhere noon.

2.
Measure me
I whispered to the moon
but his mind,
that bad boys’ crony
was elsewhere, his eye
on different scandals,
just dark by me.
So Measure me
I whispered a little louder
to the tree (American basswood,
our own kind of linden, tilia)
and he smiled the way they do.
The way they almost always do.

3.
So you see how trapped
I must have felt
(the feeling is passing away
even as I speak, scent of patchouli
on a woman who walked past,
Benedict Canyon, so long ago,
so many trucks going by,
where was I?),
trapped
in who I thought I was,
thought, that somber jailer
of our grown-up days.
Desist from thinking.
Hop a ride to Yerba Buena
don’t bother coming back.

4.
Life means sleeping
in someone else’s bed
every night for all the years
and call it yours.
You know how to do it,
you read the books,
Rabelais and Gildersleeve,
you know that language
keeps its distance from the thing,
you know identity
is the least of our worries
until it falls away
and leaves me looking at the sky,
stiff-necked, waiting
for a meteor to come by
and assure me it is summer
and Perseus is casting darts
now that Andromeda
is sad from the sea,
and stands there in the moonlit meadow
smiling at me, saying
the moon is too bright to see.

5.
When sadness is going
or almost gone
what takes its place?
Fly on the window screen,
wasp on a paper plate.
O yes, it’s daylight again,
they do come back, the days,
the centurion with his baton
leads them one by one
out of the dark, not a word,
but have you ever seen
a blue rose? here, take
this one, it grew for thee alone.

6.
But sadness is a fact,
usually the shadow
of someone who has just
passed by on their way
to being someone else
from the one we need.
Smell of patchouli,
street map of the Mission,
a cigarette. The years
seem to be winning
but then the hero comes
and rescues us in sleep.

7.
Don’t doubt your dinner
says the wolven to her cub,
it’s the least we can do,
be nourished and be ready.
Grown up to prowl and howl—
the moon needs you, and all
those strange people need the moon.
The wolf cub is too young to wonder why.

8.
See, when cyclists roll by
your house they’re always talking,
talking as they wheel along,
loud clear voices and you wonder
would they talk so brightly
if they sat, just sad together
under a leafy linden tree
like the one out back with whom
I hold so many conversations.

9.
Sadness just a shimmer now,
breath a moment
on the mirror then
clear image of myself again.
A window works better,
shows the other Holy alterity,
breakfast in the stars.

10.
But grief too
is a relief,
sadness is a lazy town,
just lie back and frown
and nothing to do except
accept and wipe your eyes
and guess it had to be.
With some reluctance
I totter to my feet, walk
down to the station
and take the bus to Fresno
where there is no past.
But then I remember
that waitress in the TexMex dive
and know that all the past
is my personal tattoo.
Get off the bus before it is too late.
                                                          14 August 2020

Out of green sleep an answer thrums,
we know the pattern from the stars
the drumbeat just repeats.
Wake, look round. Trees,
mostly trees, and in the middle distance
cars going past, fast.
You knew all this while you were still asleep.

2.
But a hand reaches out
and touches your knee.
It is your own. See
how mysterious sleep is,
all images and no way home.

3,
I gave you trees now give me gaiety
the glad of going and of coming back,
Hecate’s daring dancers on Hera’s lawn,
she looks three ways at once
and right at you,
watch her women dance, their moves are words,
the weave of sense from tree to tree–
I told you to wake up but now it is almost too late.

4.
Because when you have seen them dance
it changes everything.
You want to reach out and touch them at least,
but that of all things is wrong.
The Dream Deciders told you that
long ago but you forgot.
Now say your Mass and wipe your lips
and thank the trees for telling you all this.

                                                         9 September 2019

photo by Charlotte Mandell

photo by Charlotte Mandell

Be up and be now
the weather insisted,
eyes open are best
to meet the maybe.
But the chair is sad
at last, and all the books
have read me blind—
am I only the echo
of what someone else sang?

2.
How the sand piles up
along the shore,
so clean, so clean!
as if it came from heaven
and the ocean keeps it pure,
I dreamed I was bringing
clean sand to the shore,
my gift to the weather
of what things are.

3.
Live by quotation
the way the Japanese
know where words come from
on their way to being said.
Live by creation, God-like and fresh,
live by rotation,
spinning in place
to keep singing in form,
live by donation,
give everything away.

4.
And still the radicals
cling to the characters,
images persist, their linger
is our language too.
Who first said ‘you’
and what did they see
with their startled eyes,
the very first stranger,
the other, the god?

5.
In the climate of repose
is there only one of me?
It’s morning, can’t I wake up
another in me to share
the burden of light, the quest
of outward, the same old new?

6.
You can tell I’m frightened,
anyone would be
who was me. And you there
with these words on a page
or screen before you,
don’t you feel a little edgy too?
When you’re reading
you never know what’s coming next—
just like morning on an ordinary day.

                                      11 August 2020

The street is a bone
we flesh along.
Timid ones,
ever asking.
Why do things
suckle us so well?
Nourished by evening
spill the new day.
By the birdbath
she was waiting,
things happen,
happen that way.
Look at the street sign,
guess at the truth—
she will lead you home
in her own sweet time
but will she let you go?
The story folds around you,
that is what they do.
You do right to be afraid,
or cautious at least
like sunrise in the treetops.

2.
Are we there yet is like
the always song.
Cars are not equipped
with answers, chariots
at least had horses and you know
they have heads to toss
and yea and neigh.
forgive the pun. The pain
of not knowing
where going
goes and why
and when. And then.

3.
She gave so much
we couldn’t leave.
Story of the earth,
Fomenko chronology,
we just got here,
Jesus had seen Abraham,
Babylon is yesterday
and Rome tomorrow
almost, almost are we now,
shepherdless sheep,
green as goslings, we
turn out after all to be
just one more kind of animal.

4.
So zoo me.
Say on my sign
he thinks he sings
and lives the sky.
Bless me, this zoo
has no cages,
the walls are made of roads,
they feed us day
and give us night to drink
and we linger,
restless sleepers
on the brink of knowing.

5.
In this religion
there is a place
called Somewhere Else,
some manage to go there,
plane or train, coracle, ox,
and never come back.
Some come back with pictures,
leafy descriptions of that place,
tattoos they got there,
recipes for cassoulets,
all the fraudulent evidences
of our senses five
arrayed against the silent
beauty of our mind.

6.
I am the first to admit
to my timidity.
Caution cushions fate—
fact. Girl with prayer book,
boy with roadmap
stumbling through the dark—
we need light to read by
but how to come by it?
I tremble quietly and look away.
Anything can be taken away—
that is the rule of the place
and we learn it as our mother tongue.
Or is there a language with no past tense?

                                                10 August 2020

Write an Iliad
every day

until the Greeks
think they’ve won
and sail off home.

And we can be
ourselves again,
near a golden river

city on a hill.

                                   9.VIII.20