ROBERT
KELLY

Suppose a ship.
Not necessarily that
trim craft Dante
with some of us boy poet
friends set out
upon the slender sea
in quest of the magic island
where the Word grows,
haunted by a hungry Muse,

suppose a ship, doesn’t have
to be a liner nosing through ice floes
or an ironclad scared of torpedoes,
a ship we have to suppose,
not even a Norwegian freighter
o that deep blue flag in new light
lipping at dawn up the Narrows
between Brooklyn and Staten Island,
between where I lived and where I worked,

suppose a ship, of course
not a cruise ship
pretending to be a city
or an aircraft carrier
pretending to be an island,
suppose a ship, no authentic
caravel carrying Aztec gold to Spain,

be patient with me, suppose
a ship, not a ferryboat
across the Bosporus, not a skiff
on the Baltic, bright-haired
warriors scudding towards
one more battle,

suppose a ship
instead as calm as the sea
it proposes to ride, suppose
a ship empty, sails furled
neatly, resting at the shore
peaceful as a sleeping nun,

suppose we make our way
down the sands and climb on board,
suppose the inscrutable crew
casts off so we drift
slowly enough almost across
the current as the wind
picks up, no sails up yet,
we wonder about that,
the wood of the deck
is fresh and clean, the taffrail
polished and smooth,
is it leather maybe? hide
of some ancient beast still soft?

Above us they’re unmuzzling the sails,
suppose we feel for the first time,
maybe the first time ever,
what the sea is saying to our feet,
subtle sway of limbs, balance,
suppose its word seeps
up into us, reaches the shallows
of loins and heart and mind,

the ship is moving steady now,
the sails boisterous, loud creak of wood,
noisy boot-steps of the unseen crew
doing whatever it is they do

and we go! Suppose we go
and keep going
as long as the sea
keeps talking,
and is there ever
night on this ocean?

Suppose there are cabins down below
or bunk beds or hammocks,
suppose we can sail
all day and into the dark
then sleep easy into day again
and go along wittingly with
whatever the sea was saying,
saying even now,
suppose the ship
is underneath us now
and we have sailed
all the way to today,
storm-free, the horizon clear.

3 September 2020

The streets are wet outside
and I heard rain—
I’m being logical again,
not always a safe call.
Sage move. The streets
are open about what happens
and give clear hints
of where they go.
But nothing of the past.
Who knows where anything
comes from? This rain
I infer from heaven
as they used to call the sky
with a logic of their own.

2.
And who were they?
Ancestors clearly
but how to prove it?
All the noble DNA analyses
tell us more or less
where someonebodies
lived or went or came from
on a long trail of maybes.
But never who? So
who are they anyway
who made us who we are?

3.
Does it matter,
as the street would say.

Here we are, and we
are mysterious enough.

Which of us has looked
asked Thomas Wolfe
into his brother’s heart.

And I don’t even a brother,
if you know what I mean.

Just an endless series of I and you
covering the planet

with colza beans and Cadillacs
as nobody used to say.

4.
Which leaves the streets wet
and the sky far away
as usual. I was going
to say that in French
but it would sound snarky
or show-offy, just like me,
comme d’habitude.

5.
You can tell I’m struggling
with anxiety, a whole brain
full of what its tenant
doesn’t want to think about.

Anxiety silences desire,
shrivels perception, cancels
meaningful speculation
about astronomy and history.

When smart poets are anxious
they keep quiet. Why don’t I
just go for a walk. Rain
never hurt anyone, did it?
Then I think of poor Chausson
dead in a bike crash—
what was the weather like
that day, and was he singing?

6.
The thing to do
is not say I today—
then there will be no one
to interfere with the song.
And it will all be song and sense and you.

2 September 2020

Soft day
teach me something.
Pearl sky,
remind me
there is yielding
to be done,
letting, letting go.

And dear trees,
some of you know
how hard it is
to be green all year round,
tell me how

or at least teach
long peaceful sleep
where I can dream
what flowers when I wake.

Grey sky
full of the softest light
settles around us
like the prayer
of a child
who has been praying
from the beginning of the world

1 September 2020

photo by Charlotte Mandell

gently, gently,
no ideas,
whatever happens
is philosophy enough.
I’m not just saying
watch the birds
like some old Roman augur,
but there are worse
books you could read.
Just walk around,
the river can take care of itself,
the storm has passed,
only your cuffs are still wet.

2.
Have I told you
more than I meant to,
buzz in your ears,
some placid music
you have to rinse off,
and the rain has stopped?
If so, blame the air,
blame the holy human breath
that breathes and breathes
and every inhalation
is balanced by a word
that must speak out.
It’s only a little bit my fault
that I’m not a quieter animal
with a small vocabulary of growls.
No, breath masters me,
my words pester you,
for the sake of all that’s holy
it’s just a dance.

3.
I woke this morning
to the almost supernatural
clarity of Mendelssohn,
first piano concerto, end
of the first movement
and understood as never before
how free this music was
from moral obscurations,
empty emotions. It was pure
delight, an angel enraptured
by his own angelic freedom,
notes on the keyboard
as many as stars. And all
through the next two movements
the healing work went on.

4.
The you I keep bothering
with lyrical effusion
is a variable quantity,
a pure crystal glass full of listening.
But there is this me
who keeps saying I to you
dragging the whole business down—
not to earth but to some
grey middling neighborhood,
more dogs than trees,
windows dark by 10 PM.
Those clean dull streets
could that be the real
to which the poem summons you,
calls us both, stern
teacher with her mind on something else?
No—it means to creep along
like a minor Mendelssohn
joying in the sounds it makes,
trusting the breath
to make the world yet again
real enough to walk around in,
the birds louder than a book.

                                   30 August 2020

Another word was waiting.
The Trojan War. An empty
bottle floating in the surf,
volleying gently back and forth.
The shore. A spoon
to catch the sky in.
Mesdames et messieurs,
an ocelot for sale
on the left bank of the Seine
Sunday morning,
what kind of church is this.
Tumult of religion
when race is bad theology enough.
Open the side door. A moped
with a priest on it, all in white
and going fast. Car left idling
while the driver pees in the woods.
A familiar story
obscurely told, to quote a review.
What was the matter with the war,
why did it fizzle out, like rain,
is human violence
just a part of the weather?
An alabaster urn
to hold and honor emptiness.
Strange packages in the mail,
seven little roughly paper-wrapped
items covered with stamps,
how expensive to send me
and who would and what are they
small, each one a few ounces,
can rest on my palm, feel
soft inside, and seven of them,
stars? Dollars? Gleam
on the windshield of cars,
evidence of the sun,
Water of the saint’s canal
gently oozing south,
really, we always call water
by the wrong names,
wrong color, we don’t understand
water, we use so much of it,
our bodies are mostly it, yet
we gaze on it as a thing apart
when all you are is ocean am.
You are not the first person
to lose your way in these woods,
I have been wandering here
a thousand years at least
and all the roads lead further in.
Maybe the core is what it means,
like the old alchemists’ vitriol,
what you seek is deep inside
but you must purify yourself
and it to find it—something like that
their motto meant. Please,
feel free to use my telephone–
remember when you had to pay
long distance rates to call abroad
(five dollars I recall to buy a book
in Oxford once and thought it cheap)
but now everything is here.
That language on the notepad
is Slovenian, from a city
where dragons guard the river,
water is sacred, like language
but some find it easier to learn.
I wish Achilles had stayed in Thessaly,
he’d speak good Turkish now
or maybe even Bulgarian—
Helena was so happy here,
lovely she looked studying us
from up there on the parapet
as if the whole world
were in her hands. Stay home,
traveler! Turn your daggers
into tuning forks, to coin a phrase,
get all the instruments in tune,
sing it, play it, sing it louder,
drown out the actual
and your city will not fall.
This is what magic means,
and magic is all we have.
They read the wrong book
and the gate is gone.

                                     29 August 2020