ROBERT
KELLY

The empty air
was inside him now
and sleep a half-
remembered folk song
from a far-off tribe,
the mysterious Awake.

2.
What to do
with all this music?
Hang by a thread
then cut the thread?

3.
Nyet. No good.
The dark no comfort.
The glass teeters on the edge.
Yesterday afternoon
a plate fell and did not break.
Hold onto that.
Still hope in the hands.

4.
Sleep elusive maiden
in this wood with so few trees,
all her names
shadows of the still unfallen leaves.

5.
We can close our eyes
but not our ears.
But he has eyes in the mind
he cannot close.
Listen to the dark, then,
brother, the sneers of sleep.

11 October 2021

The mist has lifted.
Only in the highest leaves
lingers. The registers
of human speech
define our atmosphere.

2.
We understand the speaker
better when we see the kind of tree
that grows inside.

3.
Eager for conviction,
she listens with her whole body,
reminds us of a stream,
freshet from the hills
washing her with words.

4.
But who is speaking?
There’s a little book of mine
came out only in German
called Wer spricht?, means
Who is Speaking. Still want to know.

5.
These episodes of understanding
come like monarch butterflies,
dozens of them
and then none,
while they’re off
multiplying in Mexico.

6.
Get it straight:
the pool cue
is not a fountain pen.
It doesn’t mean a thing
if it doesn’t leave a trace.

7.
And so we met
off Harvard Square,
brunch at the Basque restaurant
and talked high poesy.
It was almost like being alive
but not quite. But I could see
the shores of pure Being
over the messy waves of chat.

8.
So close now
to Another Thing.
What could it be
that sings to me.
Sometimes it takes
the form of pain,
leg or shoulder,
wrist or brow,
sense works hard
to music us
and sometimes it hurts.
Sometimes you wake up in the dark.

9.
Remember how we started,
pebble on a beach,
changes color when it’s wet.
Slips into any pocket,
any ear can hear this word.

7 October 2021

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