Feb 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
214.
Sometimes finish something be enough
to begin with
‘a balanced aquarium’
Antin explained when we were kids
so much I learned from him I’ll never
admit
plants feed fish excrete feed plants
oxygen out of nowhere
only the sun needs helium
at the other end of its cosmos last
dream’s gentlest touch
thrill the way a bird does or morning
light
mockingbird on the bridge in rain
where herons often glide from pond to
bay
I’m gasping for breath airless in
Gaza
to see me suffer puts the leaves to
sleep.
215.
Night stuff thick
ankles of consciousness
slow drag a thickened broth
a cake of beef fat offered to birds
there are days music will not listen
means that no one hears
after a month on the sea it is hard
to be anybody else
say it with your hands the way the
night
is religion only something other
people do
glamor of the ivory corpus constantly
reminds
once there was a place where these
things mean
thank God we have to make our own.
216.
Walk over there and meet myself
departing
signs of death I cannot find my shoes
lost my heart in the Rockaways
began to think that love was made of
skin
cathedrals walk beside you when you go
I flew over the Hadramawt and Mars
looked back
the meaningless politeness of the
desert rock
the empty cup I offer to my friends
how little I’ve given, how much
proposed
littoral birds the afikomen found at
last
set me my place at the table near the
door
sometimes the sight of food makes me
despair.
Feb 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
212.
This is Book VIII of the Aeneid
we finally go inland here
where the dark river loves us
into the unknown interior of your
house
where maples hang overslow waters
when we look down to see our faces we
see nothing
the water has faces of its own
animals (this is all about animals)
begin to talk now
we write home saying “animals talk to
us now
what are we going to do with our
silences
our precious silence?” but no letters
come back
deer run right into us we can’t
understand the crows.
213.
I thought she was grieving in her
ogival cloak
her face white but when I bent to
console her
she was laughing she comforted me
she put words in my mouth I wake
half-healed
have to live this clear thing not
just know it
her word was sweet and I spoke it all
day
in the dark country where everybody
lives
keening sometimes or laughing at the
faces
peering out from the hillside ancient
still young
their skin soft as lamb’s ears pale
as mistletoe
they look as if they remember me
but who am I now?
Feb 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
Robert Kelly and Susan Quasha present their book, Winter Music, at the Kleinert Gallery in Woodstock NY, part 2 of 2
Feb 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
Robert Kelly and Susan Quasha present their book, Winter Music, at the Kleinert Gallery in Woodstock, NY, part 1 of 2
Feb 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
210.
So pleasure it is, pleasure and
praise
the rain has stopped the colors last
don’t look back it’s only a flower
gaining on you
only a womb anxious to reclaim me
the last night on the island I saw exact
in dark my mother’s face
let me learn to say this countenance
expressionless veridical completely
there
have I lived up to anything she
proposed
we don’t know what we ask of one
another
what we give we hope is what was
wanted
such gifts are absolute no giver no
receiver
have I ever given you anything at all?
211.
Solitude, light rain, kindness kiss the
sweat off his back
let him go the world’s big enough
to be big enough for the smallest
words
argent, a tower gules and then he
said
from this window she can see anyone
who comes and goes
but everyone is upside-down
man coughing in the morning breeze
how does she keep all that she sees
from floating away
to build a thing and then believe in
it
a tower or a testament
Dostoyevsky railed against mere chemistry
the bonds that love us into one
another’s lives.
Feb 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
208.
Forgive that little lude or play between the going on
I lost the knack of not answering
myself
I stand accused of lying down a folly
to the Greeks
of rising up again at cock-crow and
my people know me not
for I was married to a windmill and a
lake
in summer rain every green a
different color
I set it down meaning to revere it
later
but then came Cossack horsemen
through the aching shtetl of my brain
and who knows now where reverence
went
thirteen Jews at a table telling the
joke that is God
who when he was lifted up healed all
the world but not himself
sunrise from the earth he had no self
to heal.
209.
I’m still with Abbot Benedict still
with Malory
cannonshot was supposed to be the end
of us
the middle time we called it when we
were young in it
now it’s only now and Internet is our
Maimonides
everything lasts everything changes
no one remembers
pleasure is the only gift study how
to please
it lasts as long as Christmas does seventeen
years and come again
I want to know the cycle of each
thing
lifespan of the chickadee of Niagara
of me for that matter but nobody
knows
how well we’d live if we knew the
date of our demise
olé! I die today.
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