ROBERT
KELLY

Four blocks of un-masoned stone, rough-quarried limestone, oblong, huge, waiting for language’s child’s hand to play with them into meaningful array,

or just play.

One stands
three lie.

Another stands,
an upright couple,
a couple lying down.

Marry me
stone keeps saying,
marry me, wed me
back into earth

for I weary sometimes
of sunlight’s games,
sleep with me.

Are the down two
supine or prone?
Hard to tell
when all sides are the same,

hard to tell as music—
is music face down when we hear it
or staring up at us
eyes wide open
saying Marry me
over and over?

Now all four are standing,
Stone Age temple
you can her them laughing
at our innocent religions

when all they ever have to do
is stand there.
Or lie down
as before,

I’d call them prone,
hiding their faces
from us if they could,
but they forget:
stone is all face.

Nothing hid.
Are they on a meadow
or a hilltop?
You decide,
you’re the one who sees them now,
I’m just trying to remember.

And does it even matter
how big they are,
I see freight-cars
you see cardboard
little boxes, cookies
could come in them,
or a dozen pencils
(remember them?
wooden stocks with words in them)

what does size matter
except to the patient earth
that maybe vaguely yearns
to have its children back again.

You never know
with blocks of rock,
Stonehenge laughing at us
for five thousand years,
and in the Anatolian tepes
older stones are coming back,
shouldering their hills aside,
calling out for human help
to be out here again with us.

But who are we
that stone should care?

Four blocks to play with
and you’ll never finish,

permutations of position,
and the way their shadows
join and part and sway
all through the livelong day,

maybe shadow music
is enough to see,
how identical objects
cast so many different shapes.

Abashed by truth
we stand around
staring at the stones,
wait for sunrise or solstice
or anything we could link
with what we think

or think the stones are doing.
What do stones do?

But I too want to see them standing,
standing or lying,
thick in daylight, real,
teach me real!

I want to be alone with them,
just me and them
and their hill or meadow
or jungle or whatever,
what do I know
of where stones live?

Just let me be alone with them
an hour, or even less,
long enough to catch my breath,
steep hill, wide meadow,
and stand there,
try to be as still as they are
and try to mean as much
as a man can of what they mean.

6 October 2021

Prayer wheel spins,
leaves fall.
The instruction is constant,
a woman’s voice
raised to the boy in the moon.

2.
See and sea
say the same
she said.
The sight of it
rinses clean.
Her tune went like that,
finding the occult in the obvious,
plain as the moon in the sky.

3.
This time of year
she began, remembering
all the others,
eight of us crammed
in a Mahindra Jeep
engine off to save gas
plunging down the mountain road.
No guard rails in human thought.

4.
But could she make sense
without singing?
Could the sun shine
without giving light?
You walk on the rocks
your feet get lost to remember.

5.
Little whirlpool
where the stream bends round,
no danger for us larger beasts
but still. She sat on the bank
and watched the patterns
form and swirl and vanish,
thought This is what I am
and why I am here.
The thought
felt like a prayer
and suddenly she understood
there doesn’t have to be a God
for prayer to work,
song in its own sake lifted.

4 October 2021

Almost as if it had vanished in the night
the learnèd boulevard, the stone
pillars of the mind museum.
Remember that island, church,
parliament, appropriated art,
could be any city, I’ll call it
by some other name, just this once
names don’t matter, it’s Saturday,
they mow lawns, tremble a little
remembering the night. O yes,
that’s where I began, something
vanished in the night, Europe
I think, or Greek Philosophy—
who said we dare think about the world?
Who gave us permission?
Schools are closed on Saturday
tra-la, but shul is busy and lawns
interview the morning sun. Yes.
Something survives. Let it last
in me, in every me you choose to be,
the glory of sheer difference.

2 October 2021

Under the burning coals
the news
of what is to come.

2.
We make it happen
then we blame
the other.

3.
Steiner sussed out
the karmic DNA,
who I was
before I was me
and still was me.

4.
Pilgrims still
from restaurant to restaurant,
did they bake yams
in the Seychelles?
Remember Paris in the April snow?

5.
It catches up with us.
It sings.
Sings until we think
we mean the song.

6.
Love is not what you think,
love is what you do,
and suddenly you surprise yourself. 

7.
Pick the pieces up
a plastic chip, a bottle cap
in a room you never entered
and figure out how they got there.
Hold the plastic in your hand.

8.
Little by little it becomes clear,
a pale bird flies past a tree.

9.
Wrote a long letter
but sealed it quick.
You can never tell
when the words might change. 

10.
Live for me!
he shouted into the mirror.
Glass is delicate, and did.

11.
Sometimes we get close to time
and hear it thinking.
Then the tree shakes its leaves
warningly, and we hurry on.

12.
Never imagine a stone
thinks only one thing.

13.
The nice thing about percolators
is you can see how strong the brew is
by the color of the coffee
as it bubbles up in the little
glass bulb on top.
I mean color tells
when things are right.
I mean color tells.

14.
In that restaurant
the three-star chef
serves only carrots and beets,
sometimes a leaf of chard.
Wealthy patrons book months ahead—
it costs so much to be minimal,
it’s so hard to have less.

15.
It’s four decades now
since I had a cigarette—
why do I even know that now?

16.
The waitress moves from table to table,
I admire her girlish grace,
her skillful movements,
twelve tables to take care of
all by herself. She seems unfazed
by our requirements, anxieties,
explanations, complainings,
she smiles and brings us food–
tasty, nourishing, but less
interesting than the sight of her.

17.
Speaking of tables,
reden afm tsh,
the wood itself,
the silverware, the napery,
all distract us
when we talk at a table.
What could we discuss
more exciting than this fork,
last invention in human dining?
How can politics mean as much as that?

18.
So in the dream I was chopping
an onion peeled yesterday
to sauté en route to turning
two days ago’s creamed turkey
into something like curry now.
I sliced and chopped
and then began again,
mentally gathering from the shelf
turmeric and cumin and
what is that third thing I need?
Ginger is already in the cream.

19.
I hate dreaming
about doing things,
having things to do.
Dreams should be panoplies,
dioramas, murals wider than the sky.
Dream should be seen, not made.

20.
What’s for breakfast?
The sun in trees.

21.
No such thing as a vegan restaurant.
The sight of people eating
is a rich red meat.

22.
We read about this place
and here we are!
But are we ever where we think it is?

23.
Pick out the linguine
strand by strand
and loop each into a letter
on the tablecloth.
See, writing is always possible,
the word is always waiting,
like the waiter bringing
you back your credit card.

24.
So what’s for dessert?
Kiwi sorbet—here, lick my thumb.

24.
Leave something in the glass,
the light loves that little
jiggling movement on the surface—
it is the only place we live.

26.
It got cold outside
while we were eating—
is it our fault, food’s fault,
restaurant’s failing?
Why can’t we be
our own weather?
And it’s dark too,
what kind of place is this,
where they turn off the sky?

1 October 2021

The beak was bronze
the book was brown
hidden in a corner
dried out by time
the print too small to read

2.
A house is a tumulus
left by an ancient population
yourself five years ago
or more, or less, the winds
of time don’t care.
You’ll never find yourself in there.

3.
The beak shines still a little
what is it really
handle or hook
you’re half-afraid to pick it up,
a bird stiff as an umbrella
with its folded wings,
the print too fine
for the words it carries,
whispered into the dust,
every word a foreign language.

4.
The leather spine has fallen off,
dimly gold stamped in
Les Langues du Monde.
The book I’m looking for
nowhere to be found.

5.
That’s an oldish way of saying it
but saying’s on the old side too.
Mostly we stare at things
and wait for them to speak.

6.
Of course we belong to the house.
Man sounds like Moon.
Sun sounds like Nun,
a holy woman married
only to the One.

We make the house
the house makes us—
sounds like a children’s game
and we can’t grow up.

7.
I was looking for a book in Latin
to lend a friend, Ausonius
on his river but I found
a Bible instead. Same language,
different river. Rivers.
Come, wash yourself clean.

8.
So it doesn’t make sense
to look for what you have
or thought you had. Looking
is a quest and should be saved
for the unlikely, the distant,
the absent, the never happened.

9.
Looking for something
you don’t know what you’ll find
don’t know what you’ve found
and it’s always too dark to tell.
It’s like going to school again,
that time where we all sat around
discussing books we hadn’t read
the right way at all, not at all.

10.
So I shouldn’t have bothered looking.
If the book’s so smart
let it find me.
It can read itself
in perfect dark
better than I can
with all the watts.
I look out the window and realize
state law requires all vehicles
to use headlights even in daytime.
And now I know why.
The mind of a driver is always dark,
like someone reading a missing book.
8 May 2021

for Charlotte

burning tree above me
it lives by fire
and its leaves are not consumed.
The car is cool though,
green as the leaves
and cool gentle breeze
walks through the window
open just a sliver
to let the world in.
Could this be now
the way a mountain is?
Or did it mean a fountain?
What fables words tell,
include you as you fall
down through them
bravely listening.

2.
This morning I do not want
the continuous, I want
pearls on an invisible string,
want footsteps, staircase,
Viennese. The steps
are horses’ hooves
and it is morning. Bells
annoy the hooded crows,
rooks, doves and shadows–
hard to see with all that music.

3.
Once there was a beginning
and twice an ending came.
Three times is the charm they say
so I’ll wait here she said
until all the ending starts again.
She lay on her lawn
prone to love the loping rabbits.

4.
See how strangely
truth comes to town,
in wet clothes
carrying a flame.
Call it a church
so don’t pay taxes,
make the whole harbor
holy water, wave
the Torah to make the wind blow,
make up truth as you go along—
it’s always there,
waiting to be made.
That’s what cities are for.

5.
Read Olson and Augustine
till you believe. Nothing
more accurate in all higher
mathematics than your street address,
o sacred numbers
change them at great risk.
Once they gave a new number
to my house so now I have
two places I call here.

6.
You’ll say I’m scraping the barrel
but the barrel is gone,
winey oak and old, it tumbled
over the falls with no one in it,
bobbing down the rapids,
I watched it till it met its mother
river water and was home.
All I have is what it left
faintly on my fingers,
I kick them and say more.

7.
Cantinflas was a comedian
remember him?
cunning awkwardness
was his sly trick in trade.
And why do I mention him now?
Why do you suppose?

8.
I don’t mean to sound snarky
but the leaves are very new
the clouds are few
it’s hard to be solemn as an overcoat
even though the day is chilly
and I have translated so much
and so long from the dim
Late Latin of my sleep.

9.
An oriole
heard yesterday
by woman
told me tell
love is a call
in the sky
hear, Now.
Right now.

10.
What are we as a people?
We stand in the doorway
making sure we have our keys
before we go out, pocket
after pocket we survey, ‘check’
we say but we have never
been there before, dark after dark
and still no keys? What to do?
Go back inside or leave forever?
Or just go out and leave unlocked
and hope the house will still be here
if we ever remember to come home.

11.
Because pockets are caverns in our now,
in the tenuous geology of our day,
which way we walk or rest,
what’s hidden in them now,
mini-flashlight, komboloía,
handkerchief. Wallet. Keys.
And all the dust of our travels
and something more–the memory
of our hands and what they’ve held,
it’s like a gospel to go in theorem
so many minders of your truth–
so keep one pocket empty always
and sometimes tuck your fingers
gently in to feel what is to come.

12.
So now it’s turned
continuous–can’t have that,
go back to those beads,
feel one then let it go,
take another, then another,
don’t let your consciousness
imagine some smart string
to sling them on, no,
one and one and two
is just another one again.

13.
A woman took pictures of women
but dreamed one night about a man.
He stood with his back to her
facing the sea. So she became the sea.

14.
That’s what I mean,
the answer embedded in the question.
The smell of food cooking
nourishes something in us
that the food can’t feed.

15.
We plan an expedition
for the day. We will go
and walk across the street
to see some blue new flowers
I have never seen but you
saw yesterday and showed
a picture of them on your phone.
Or have we seen enough already?

16.
That damned pale car
is parked again among
the trees a furlong off,
our trees I want to say
because trees mean to belong
only to those who see them,
climb them, talk to them,
gratefully accept their fruit.
Trust me, I have plausible
theories about everything.

17.
Disconnect! Liberate!
Let the next
be new.
The sun is brighter now
but the air no warmer.
Is this the same day as today?
Only if you insist.

18.
So there’s my Vienna
for you, my love,
steeples and kids whirling around,
waltzes and czardases and
who knows mazurkas,
soundless this morning
so as not to disturb you,
your face so beautiful
on the satin pillow. Vienna?
Athena? A beauty in you
that wakes me the whole world.

7 May 2021

Come with me
came with him
in the soft
green shell around
the hard shell
engraved around
the fruit of the core
just soft enough
to chew: walnut,
European culture.
The king’s tree,
queen’s misery.

2.
An island is a slippery thing
even when the jags jut out
black granite from the sea.
The sea comes from all sides in
to hold it in place, lave its loss
of larger, feed its shorebirds,
ospreys, fish crows, us.

3.
I was born on one
and can’t forget,
big or small, minnow or sturgeon,
it surged its way to stand still
and still I dream that it
with me will sail away.

4.
My uncle had a tugboat
my uncle had a war
my uncle was a Mason
my uncle said his prayers in Hebrew
my uncle was a Welshman
and let me read his books,
my uncle was a garbage man
my uncle was police.
My island was a busy place
but let me go.

5.
The best thing to do with the sea
is look at it, pray to it, talk to it, listen.
Try not to cross it–
look what happened to us when we did.
Try not to do much more
than swim in it reverently
respectful of seals.

6.
Come with me he said
I will show you where the walnut grows,
I did and he did, a big old tree
beside the summerhouse
squirrels kept sneaking
the green nuts in, soft green outside
like many a friend, so many
layers to get through
to what is on the inside
as we used to say
as if the core of anyone
is a planet with its own geology
and all you get to know
is islands, islands.

4 May 2021

for Joel Newberger

Hit the ball
back at the pitcher
it will confuse
the enemy with answers

2.
the cliffs crumble yes
but not while we’re watching
there is a number
deep in every stone

3.
so I have come to
teach you how to
dance this footless
figure round the maypole
the fleeing center
that is always right here

4.
as if there were children
in the house we never see
or a genital smell seems
left on the wind.
All bodies one body?

5.
it snowed last night
up the mountain there
over the river and
the wind wild down here
you shook a tree at me
you chilled my pillow

6.
because there is only you and me
to share one world, one verb,
no room for another, you
are the other

7.
o sea thou eldest spectacle
let me visit thee again,
teach me the truths
that vision’s for,
to anatomize the bodiless
and read the minute print
of everything that writes
by moving and everything moves

8.
hear the counsellors
rapping on the door
let them a little in
it’s cold out there
or hot dry wind so
be kind as wood
kind as water listens,
every one is a messenger

9.
and every two
a common-law marriage,
let the priest sleep
o be common be
common and be true
the government alas
is our eldest son
a greedy selfish sort
mind of his own

10.
so we drank the morning
and chewed all afternoon
visitors came bearing cakes
small ones from a city
you could taste the population
thick and dark and sweet
there is no night to such a day

11.
to know the gender of the sun
is all I meant,
reverence for Her difference
light is the mother milk
come drink with me

12.
it takes so long to be quick
let me be slow
and let you go
wandering my field
it goes as far as you
feel like walking

13.
of course I try
to be a tree
for you to dance around
and you do

14.
one waits for the day
when we eat no more beasts
and live on light alone
cloud sandwiches
drizzle for dessert

15.
but so long to wait
and even now
breakfast snarling at the gate

16.
so magic is the answer
go on and on and on
the conversation drivels on
and yet you rise
wise from it and carry
wisdom into silence
to let it sing

17.
how little it takes
to make
and so we do

18.
happy May Day
to the fence and the forest
the wool and the marigold
so many challenges churches
circuses scars
so many stars
the dance is us
I say
so go and play.

1 May 2021

We went to church
and got long strips of palm,
dry, yellowish, hard
to imagine greening on a tree.
At home we’d make
two brief lengthwise slits
in a longer piece and weave
a shorter through it: a cross.
This palm cross always made us glad
strange gladness considering
the tortured death it symbolized,
but who were we to question
long tradition of celebration,
so the palm cross stayed up,
pinned to the wall or stuck
into a mirror frame, a cross
to bless our house this year,
a small holy thing, maybe
six or seven inches tall.

2.
We did all this just because
we were Catholics, or Irish,
all the people in the neighborhood—
from Sicily, Naples, Calabria—
did it too.
                     Who knows
why we do what we do.
And where did crosses come from
anyhow? Dry scholars claim
we wear them round our necks because
Viking ancestors worshipped Thor
and wore his double-headed hammer
tiny round their necks.
Is that the hammer that once
nailed Christ to His cross?
It hurts me to think of what we do
to those who love us,
love us enough to come talk to us.

4.
My fingertips still can feel
the dry tough smooth
of the little palm cross,
months later when we took it down,
stuck it in a prayer book.
bookmark, eternal souvenir
of what we don’t understand,
why we do what we do,
why we are who we are.

28 March 2021

Bone me. Unfeather my fears.
I was a mountain before you
and I let everyone climb,
my springs sprang high,
sluiced down into your dry fields.

2.
Was that me singing? No,
it was you in all your windows
glad of my rain. I admit
you learned the song from me
but you sang better:

There was
a woman walking
on the road
in wet clothes
though the rain
stopped long ago,
long ago, some
water lasts forever.

You must have liked the song
you sang so well.

3.
Remember the Pyrenees
when we first began,
pink chalk dust all over your hands
and three flat stones
to hold the kettle over
the meanest fire charcoal ever set
and yet we drank that tea
lime leaves and honey
and an eagle feather fallen in the pot.

4.
I shaped you,
I hope you know that—
grow a little more this way,
a little less that.
I was the Donatello of your dreams
and when you woke
we both were complete.

5.
When I get around to it
tell me the truth,
how long we lingered
in such crowded markets
until there were
just two of us left, and I
bossy as usual called
one of them you and one of them me.

The crowd was gone,
the stalls were empty,
windows all shattered in the storm.
We’re used to ruins
(we live in them, remnants
of an earlier reality,
we still stumble on their bricks)
used to ruins so in the collapse
of this economy felt right at home.
That was before you decided
to become a mountain too.

6.
Who was that wet woman?
I can hear your curiosity.
She was your missing sister Sarah,
the one who believes in religion,
no day without its baptism,
I tried to stop her for a chat,
a sweet tisane, a Turkish cigarette
but no, she was late for vespers
or a seder or some such thing,
left me with a little pamphlet,
its pages all stuck together from the wet,
something about triangles, gods, hearts.

7.
Now I’ve lost track
of all the times I’ve told
and you believed
enough to make it true.

And you told back to me
a reasonable commonwealth
not too close but still
this side of the moon.
Every day turns out to be Election Day—
and why not? All we ever have to do
is choose. I still have
that eagle feather, dry and stiff,
stuck between the pages,
an excellent bookmark it makes
but I’m not sure which book.

26 March 2021