Dec 8, 2014 | Uncategorized
83.
The square root of someone else lives
in your mind
curious behavior of measured things
caught the comfort from the cushion
and sold it to the skin
of course I want to anyone would but
I don’t will it
if I willed it heaven and earth would
have to comply
will makes you crazy wanting makes
you sane
we live decently when we recognize
our lack
a child is all waiting
how came you from so far and still a
citizen
woke before the birds again still
never alone
boat humming in weather of the mind
Mozart love-hate flute I want to kiss
his sister too.
84.
Time is the dimension in which we
unwrap space
we and only we there is no time apart
from us
distinguish shade from shadow
one of them licks your hands
to be poor is to be burdened with
memory
the doctor waiting on the porch alone
with the wind
not many people do it anymore the
young the very old
he opened his mouth and Persephone
spoke
language is the mouthpiece of another
the strangest thing about the caves
is that we think we’re out of them
this is the Dordogne the dream time
Athabaskan wilderness men with eyes
of a wolf.
Dec 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
81.
Just looking out the window I have no
window
so you have to pull the sound of
words apart
to guess the moonlight through
you’re riding on a ram up Mount
Erigal
the three moons of folklore roll up
beside you
slower than gravity, the earth cries
resist me if you dare, outmoded
primate
mere folk, graverobbers, oilsuckers
foible-witted blank-hearted
market-minded
lip-serve liturgists flower-fondlers
bird-handlers
cow-killers ocean-sievers
word-wasters
swooning philosophers, heartbreakers,
men.
82.
Picus four woodpeckers next door
pileated fledglings
no’j day of the woodpecker probe for knowledge be a girl
the things the weather tells us
Marx for breakfast Aquinas for high
tea sleep fasting
nothing matters but matter doesn’t
know it
materials seem as if there were some
other
language told me to be silent in so
many words
read this as commentary on Book VIII of the Aeneid
upriver journey into your own country
never seen before
your new arrival in yourself sunglare
on windshield
I have something to tell you you have
to tell me what it is
space between self and other shaped
by two dreams.
Dec 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
79.
Talk turns into a masked ball with
everybody
all I know is no one must know
otherwise the words don’t work, tell
only the true
never the new the one you never
the moon shining under the skin of
the sea
the long hair of the law the only
power
windswept and sound pressures the
heat that fell
from the absent sun so long ago
the weather is a spaceship bearing
messages
we have to catch new senses to
perceive their text
don’t be afraid to say hello we’ll
all be gone
three seeds plucked up by a pilgrim
bird.
80.
Three are the gates of paradise
a blazing letter stands before each door
of course it’s in the dream it
happens
it matters only when you’re not awake
the vast blue bird perches on the
roof
wet towels of the swimmers drying on
the rail
in sun and wind the changes come
difference is a molecule apart
there is no nurture in the metal
world
bonfire on the beach atomies of
amorous madrigals
but if I were a folk I would tell you
clear
in wordsongs true as stones along the
beach.
Dec 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
77.
Peaceable vortex a thun is a
time set apart
to be itself alone and nothing doing
in it but itself
a session on the other side of the
self to call it
door shut mind open listen to
listening
kept wanting more of it the
cheekbones
the tail feathers of equal length the
pinions
rimmed with blue though they look
black
magpies on the road in Colorado home
on the ground
dig deep to find the surfaces of
things
I am left with a zodiac on my hands
can I interest you in being me a
while
while I sail your white ship into the
typhoon?
78.
Woodpeckers four fledglings from a
locust tree
one more priest one more shepherd
sheepless a crowd of unbelievers
a perfect place an island think of
Latin
it never hurts to ask how red your
poll
sweet predators Mavors’ insectivore
do you hear his chimes beneath the
sea
no that is the wind that is Schubert
all alone
no one paid attention to the clumsy
instrument
the beak a young man has to know the
world
I slept my way out of more towns than
this
town or dream what difference she
lifts her skirt.
Dec 2, 2014 | Uncategorized
75.
O the street the street is a hand
that goes everywhere
why is there thistledown on your feet
I looked up mirror in the book it
showed my face
but only as others see it liars and
poets and thieves
maybe I also once stood beneath the
cross
ponderous useless unable to help him
pointless witness of so much
catastrophe
unless the act of witness has some
meaning too
everything that happens waits to be
observed
we are just iron filings summoned to
its shape
soon enough dispersed and baffled
ever after
but we know I saw this happen but I don’t
know what this is.
76.
Analysis is his vulture
browsing on human thought
write it down change it later pretend
you know
pretend it’s living steal rose petals
from the shore
you’re only borrowing the colors
light lent them first
I spoke mentally you understood
physically
what are all those prairies for
the linked absences that define sensibility
fervent mistakes “ambushes of young
years”
but I knew no worse so did what I
could
the shattered teapot the car too fast
so many pregnancies in the lost
museum.
Dec 2, 2014 | Uncategorized
New mp3 audio files online:
RK reads from The Book of Persephone, 22 November 2014 in the Woodstock Public Library
RK on writing, 22 November 2014 in Woodstock
Dec 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
73.
Stay out of sunshine walk in the
shade
I suppose this place an ancient apple
tree
older than Eden and ferns grow round
it
it leaves me with no answers
I feel glum and businesslike today
accountant of a bankrupt hardware
store
with nothing left but the names of
instruments
columns of numbers those birds of the
heavens
endlessly fluttering past and
vanishing
and O the hawk of zero knows my name
inscribable outstretched beneath him
divide by zero and smile for the
police.
74.
Some day I’ll get this someday wrong
and it will be today, the actual
two schoolchildren performing for
assembly
tell of seaweed stars in our flag
what about the starship from the
alien planet
why would they bother to come here
why do women wear flowers in their
hair
I never wanted to alter your routine
snow or swelter you know better
there are whole cities where the men
know less
spell your name the Irish way
then no one can whisper it in local
dark.
Nov 29, 2014 | Uncategorized
71.
If you keep going along this path
no road signs or they all point to
heaven
gorse I said or whin or keep you off
and green
I am a thing of books and boundaries
a headless god at the bottom of your
garden
stone and with a word or two in bad
Latin
chiseled in what I took to be my
heart
as if the earth needed reminders we
are here
or we do and always will, see how the
wind
caresses me sun remembers our nights
together
we slept on the Hill of Tara her very
grass
and never woke all this since is one
long dream.
72.
Ireland it and look again
woodcock whooshes past through sunset
lives by the No Trespass sign
the fairy mound back there that no
one knows but you
though sometimes I think I see them
walking there
in and out of the mind’s view
giving names to things and changing back
again
the fairies are the editors of earth
rinsing the sinews of our experience
no one can look at the same leaf
twice
but one bird can come twice to your
hand
carefully choosing random seeds that
you extend.
Nov 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
69.
Connect the shortcut with the longer
route
the stone that stays in heaven in the
lowland hear
we heard a dragon do I know what your
eyes mean
while a mile away your lips are
saying
spent the morning worshipping a child
another child
sea wrack and prophecy read from an
old book
older than Bible and full of stones
half my New England acre
because the river is the boundary
song the failed permission
gladiolus every minute and the blue
hydrangea
blooming as we speak but you are
silent
crisscross prophecies the bird tells
it all
invisible blackbirds piping in the
gorse.
70.
Mercy remembers all the strange names
gave to bedfellows ivy and she was
thistle
and herself the only mistletoe
semaphore hard to know how come it’s
over
the little songs of sinking ships the
atoll
lubricious indexes of unread books
I can tell your daydreams from your
midnight
because we rode together battered car
not far
never count shooting stars the way
lovers do
or daisy petals but we were angels
too
in love with not being in the body
but we were child
and children know the world is just their
guess.
Nov 26, 2014 | Uncategorized
Robert Kelly reads in Bard Hall, November 22, 2014
Recent Comments