Night Grammar

NIGHT GRAMMAR


Grammar is the lost of it. I try.
I try to beak the circle open
make seed spill
but the spoken never speaks.
Long wide the avenue runs in rain
cold past the Greyhound depot
with not a hint of noun to warm
my poor bone in
This is about grammar, not history.
This is about now. Language keeps
spilling into now, a warm coat, slop
I spilled on my lapel, my history
strewn about my house, o god the names,
the names of them,
and grammar most of all
because all the operations and relations
it supervises are right now in this hard-hat
hour, worksite where I-beams
structure thee or me, there is no other.
And how did you know that I was me
anyhow when I wandered in off the street?
Anybody could have come through that green door,
grammar is like that,
grammar is the sleep of actual things.
If grammar is a dream,
is silence waking?
Is that what’s in store for us
when the sun comes back on,
just one more tomorrow
full of other people?
Come with me to my hour,
and yes, I like your kisses
but no, they are not
comprehensive explanations.
I need more. I need your gerund,
you need my participle.
No more similes. We have come
to the heart of the sentence.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell

from MAY DAY: Poems 2003-2005