ROBERT
KELLY

Walk with them,
the pilgrims,
let your feet imagine
their feet moving
mindfully along some
country road. Where?
Wherever pilgrims go–
the going is what matters,
not the goal.

When you get there
in mind or body
you will have been changed.
Subtly, deeply, no one
will notice for a while,
not even you. You still
will speak English or whatever,
still choose coffee over tea,
still swoon at Beethoven.
But something softly slyly
will be differing in you,
day by day. Something
like happiness. Something
a little closer to truth.

31 October 2022

T.E. in memoriam

Where the quetzal sings
a friend went to listen,
escaped from winter,
the shivering ivy,
snow deep on the roof.
And where the quetzal
sings he heard English spoken,
found friends with no shirts on,
sunshine, sea coast, intimate
knowledge of wave and surf.
When spring came he went home
when woolen neighbors asked
what he’d been up to he sang
O I have heard the quetzal sing.

31 October 2022

Earth sky be different
from all other skies
so it thought in me,
I dare not mute
a migrant meaning
happens to my head,
Thinking says
what it says, I listen.
I have always
been obedient
as loud as I can.

31 October 2022

I spot a map on the wall
a country I’ve walked in
but I can’t see the girls,
the cathedrals, the avenue
of walnut trees stretching north,
I can’t hear the market jabber
in that smart tongue, can’t feel
the wind rushing down old hills.
But there it all is two feet wide
and paper thin, a little faded
from the sun, held on earth
by four push-pins, my Germany.

30 October 2022

Lindens, maples,
tall tulip tree and river birch,
my countrymen, my guides.

2.
Travel by window alone.
Th journey is long,
comforting even,
endless like the sky.

3.
They are the given,
the green necessities,
light and shadow
turn their leaves we read.

4.
Pound’s birthday,
he knew a thing or two
about trees,
and Valéry’s
who fled with the birds,
this very roof that shields
the sky from our curiosity.

5.
Trees do that, exactly
define what wedge of sky
we see betwixt their branches
as last night one
sliver of the prospering moon.

6.
Linden loves us,
maple feeds.
Be simple as that
I tell the child
I can’t stop being.

7.
So it comes back to me,
the real one or disguised
as Chinese sage or stout Cortez,
the desperate hoper who
soars or stumbles out
of the gate of every poem.

8.
No, it must
be tree,
I insist,
not me—
I wouldn’t even be
if not for someone else.
Go find the else.
The tree must know the way.

30 October 2022

What would I need?
A cello a little forest
in Bavaria, a bassoon,
a baritone to murmur
some of the odd questions
that music love to propose,
why is the moon?
who is the mother of the rock?
do you love me whoever I am?
Then I’d set them all to work,
the trees too, their rustle
is my chorus, I just have to find
the notes for the instruments,
they like exact instructions,
nothing more severe than a flute
and I need one of those too.
Can you hear it now? I need you
to tell me what I’m saying.