ROBERT
KELLY

Suppose I drew the day instead,
with a pencil, for god’s sake,
a dear old wooden karandash,
no ink to spill, no words to spell,
just lines and lines and lines
going out and coming home
or never, off the edge!
into the néant but most
stay here, on the paper, round
and round and with pointy hats on,
circles and sketched cubes,
scribble to mean shadow,
shapes like legs and shapes like eyes,
lines folded on themselves
in passionate embrace,
sensuous empty space, room
for you and me and you and you,
a fingerprint of the very moment,
a blueprint of right now.

                                              8 August 2020

1.
Come, this is no time
to be time, swagger
of morning through the trees,
no time to be now,

this is the pilgrimage
and by definition
it cannot end.
                            That woman
lying on the lawn,
that man reading beside her,

these are no pilgrims,
a pilgrim is never here,
here is the perilous place,
the Massachusetts of the mind.

2.
What could he be reading,
pilgrims read only the road,
the crows above them
guiding them carefully,
fork by fork through the dividing earth,
turn this way, my love,
the bird cries out
at every crossroads, signposts
in the sky, hurry, hurry,
here is at your heels.

3.
She sleeps, he reads–
her choice is wiser.
Dream is scary enough
without the paper.
And even if he’s reading
some old book, the words
are still dangerous—
the peril of reading is
thinking you’re thinking.

4.
But what does the lawn think?
That’s what our science
should be studying, this thingly earth
and how it answers us.
But no, all they care about
is why Cicero hated Catiline
or why the moon has spots.

5.
See, motive means moving,
and only pilgrims move.

Crow-blessed, weary-hipped,
they go and they go.

Come back soon
says every place they pass

but they never will,
even if they stumble down those

same cobblestone streets again
it will always be for the first time.

Pilgrim is a person with no again.

6.
Give me a spoon
and a cup of water,
cool or not it
doesn’t matter
so I can sip it
slow so slow—
I love the way
even at the bottom
the spoon can still
lip up a little water.
I’ll drink it on my way
and pray for you
who filled the cup
and all the miles to come
will cherish the spoon.

That’s the hymn I heard
some pilgrims sing
as they shuffled past
my oaken table
out on the sidewalk
where I sat to imagine
better versions of
all those passing by.
The pilgrims shamed me
with heir simple plea.
All I knew was a pen and a fork.

7.
Am I there yet?
You always are.
Do I like it here?
You’ll never know.
What religion in this place?
Thunder and rain.
Will they let me stay or make me go?
They do not know the difference — do you?

8.
She wakes up now,
he shuts his book.

Now the difficulties start,
they have come back to a world
with no going in it,

the lawn keeps talking
but they will not listen.

They stand up and walk
hand in hand into some house.
They seem to be smiling.

A passing pilgrim pities them,
says a prayer or two for them,
keeps going on the way.

                                   8 August 2020

The chances are real,
real as rain.
But chance is no answer,
does not fly
easy in the low grey sky,
unlike the Canada geese
of our private thinking
at home on lake or lawn.

2.
I’m trying to tell about
the sound of thinking,
raindrops, said one philosophe,
and another a piece by Schumann.
But most ignore
the noise of cogitation,
care only for the hen-tracks
left on the innocent blank page.

3.
More bird behavior.
The hawks of Wyoming,
Laramie country, summer snow,
we have our own eagles,
gladly, but we have a river
to keep them bright,
skimming from the west,
nesting near our lives.

4.
Back then I studied the mountain,
dull ornithologist, I need
something that doesn’t fly away,
I need to know
who does the thinking in my head
(if that’s where it is)
and who she is, or he, or they,
pick your favorite pronoun
and tell me, who, and what they
want, and from what country
do they come, flying silently
through my personal night.
And when they’re here
they speak, and everybody
thinks it’s me, because I hear
the sounds they make and try,
even now, to make
words of what they say.

5.
Now this owl-craft
some men call thinking,
There is a gender issue here,
earth and sky. Memory and desire.

6.
I like Aquinas.
He was fat and made
tough guesses into songs
some church still sings.
Tantum ergo we mumbled,
intricate argument
simple chant. Now sing,
right now, what I am thinking.

7.
By turning our bodies
into arguments
set to music we
begin to discern
the way to venerate.
I think all by itself
veneration is enough.

8.
Back to Wyoming—
the pronghorns
leaping like haiku
out of quick prairie.
But is that country really
what it looks like
to people in cars
going by at eighty on the Interstate?
Or is it a show they put on for us,
antelopes and mountains
pressing quick or slow
until we’re gone
then they go back to thinking.

9.
There, that’s what the word means.
Being conscious of being there.
Here. All the rest is
raindrops on the page.

10.
This dialogue with no one
is almost complete.
All it needs now is meaning.
That’s where you come in.

                            7 August 2020

Twist the rain

around your thought

to feel the friend

who’s always waiting.

Like music from

a passing car

the rain blesses you

with interruption–

put out your wrist,

feel one drop at a time.

And oh the space between

one thought and the next,

o Paradise of pure horizon.

                                               7 August 2020

All the blue camels
the bright red oxen,
the green mules,
o and the drivers,
riders, grooms and guides,
they are all colors too.

2.
So the rocky desert rang
with so many hooves,
sandstone echoing—
you could hear them coming
from a mile away
if you were there.
But you were not there.

3.
No. You were riding, tall
on a camel of your own,
salt mules slogged along
around you, you like it slow,
keep the animal spirit low,
give the camel a chance
to think as he steps along.
And his slow pace gives you
the quiet music all
travelers need to sort out
the tumbled archive
of their memory mind.

4.
The god of going had made sure
there are many oases on this route.
Almost every night you came to water,
wafture of sweet fruit trees, soft lively
shade after all those stony shadows
the desert is so loud with. Hurry,
you’re here. Slip off the beast, let it
fossick on its own, you stretch out flat
in the glad horizontal of the night.

5.
You’d almost think I’m following you,
spying on routine, daring to evaluate
somebody else’s reality—it would be
just like me. But I’m not. My days
of traveling are mostly past, I’m happy
to sit and watch you from afar.
But even from here I can hear
the clinking of the camel bells, the sand
they shuffle through, your own sighs
when every now and then even you
wish it could all go faster, even you
grow impatient with what’s now.

6.
I suppose that must be why
you climbed on the camel
to begin with. Like so many,
you allowed yourself to think
that now means here, and some
place past the horizon would be
a better now to be in. The camel
could have told you otherwise
but he’s just along for the ride.

7.
I know the feeling,
that’s how I got here
too, though to be honest
I never had an animal,
I had to walk the whole way
from the bed to the window
and taking deep breaths
go all the way to the door.
Where I’ll be waiting when
some fine day you’ll slip
off the camel’s back and tap
half timidly on that ancient wood
and all the words in the
world will let you in.

6 August 2020

The precious routines

of solitude,

                      bird on a branch

saying nothing,

meaning everything.

The eyes are given to us

to open and to close–

madness means forgetting this.

                                            5.VIII.20

No answer yet.
Pineapple slices from the can
so neatly cored,
yellow ciphers,
the terrible sweetness
of logical things,
the song of zero.

2.
Listen, I tell myself again,
a train goes by,
every night
about this hour,
never exactly the same minute,
freedom is not far,

3.
then why is the train going
and why did it come back
to go again and again
while only the horny and the hungry
are awake to hear it,
busy themselves with its meaning,
the far cities,
the forests of why?

4.
No answer yet
but nothing bores the questioner,
on and on, all night long,
sleep is just another form of it,
sleep is asking.

5.
Of course the night
tries to answer you,
always has, since you were a kid
in a railroad flat in Cypress Hills,
windowless bedroom
cross on the wall,
the dark did all it could.
It lurked and listened—
I think that was enough,
taught me to wait in the dark.

6.
So that the joyous morning
was always a kind of disappointment,
a fruit too sweet, too bright,
too new, and me a clumsy pharisee
hugging the scraps of the law,
the dry leaves left from dream.

7.
I.e., poetry. Who’s there?
Did the chest of drawers
shift in the dark?
Why does the floor creak?
Who is your mother?
sometimes I dared to ask the dawn,
Guessing at the answers
no one would give.

8.
Yes, there were windows,
but they were far away.
Even in the kitchen the table
was as far as could be from the light,
there was a war on, I drank my milk
and ate white bread, I understood
that much at least
about time and history,
eggs are oval, fruit is round,
any minute they’ll make me
go to school.

9.
                                 The feeling
does not change. it reeks
of morning still. No answer
comes apart from what we do,
every minute of our lives
is our attempt to answer
nobody’s question.
And nobody is the most
important one there is.

                                       5 August 2020

There is no ocean here

to tell me what to do.

Time unwraps something

with its hands.  I stretch

my arm through a month

to find tomorrow.  Water

or not, that is always the way.

I am here to obey.

                               5 August 2020

On some sofa beside me
almost a song, lifted a leaf
of as if it were sheet music
we used to say, innocent score,
fumbling hands. I was alone
with a piece of paper
what could I do but read it,
and it was blank, so
what could I do but write?

2.
That’s not how it began,
it feels like that still.
The triangulation: muscles
moving in the fingers,
mechanism of the keyboard
object moving in space—
and the sound coming out.
In this triangle someone
could find a self and spend a life.

3.
But it didn’t happen that way too.
You were always with me–
you being the shape of the other,
the answering voice I needed to answer,
the mountain across the river,
you absolute horizon.

4.
That’s closer to how it began.
How I began. Before that
the crowded waiting room
called childhood, where the one
lesson is to learn to be alone.
At least until the mountain comes along.

5.
Now we’re all here together,
naked in history,
learning to read
by finding the secret lover
in every book,
childhood is a state that never ends.

6.
Time to join
the whirlpool and the wolf,
the hunger and the hurry.
Take in as you are taken in
until you reach the quick
(means living) center of time
(means now) (and you means me).

7.
So on this altarpiece is shown
the transubstantiation
of time to space, space
is what we always have,
space loves us, time
is just an accident of travel,
space loves us, sits always
beside us on the sofa,
stretches out with us in bed,
walks to the corner store with us,
helps us find the mountain,
lets us lean against the tree
and fish in our pocket,
that special space, to find
whatever strange thing it is
we think we need. It’s there
all round me. It holds my hand.

                                                       4 August 2020