Ancient Fountain

ANCIENT FOUNTAIN


The water says: a leper
drank from me and was not healed

but his thirst was gone.
Then a cat lapped from me

and still could speak
only the language of cats.

Yet am I not a marvel, a miracle?
Things meet me and take me in

but I do not change them –
I deign to whatever is.

Can you say that? I stood there
abashed before its inoffensiveness.

The first rule of medicine: do no harm.
Until that moment I had not known

I was a physician but now the roses
blossom on every skin

till I kiss them off one by one
and swallow the sickness of the world.

But the water said
(how humble how insolent water’s word)

are you sure you can do that?
When you pass along this way

all the cats get leprosy
and the lepers mew, you mix things up

because you have too many words–
be like me until you have just one.

Let the conquistador of the moment
wash up on his islands, the arts

administrator revive the retro-
trash she needs to make the now-

negating statements all museums
seem to live for. Today ago.

Now sells but never can be bought,
and by the time they package it

it’s dust, Pompeii, your aunt’s
church calendar with Saint Andrew

dying on a crisscross crucifix
over her gateleg table bearing one

nameless baby’s long ago bronze shoe.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell

from MAY DAY: Poems 2003-2005