Open Theory

OPEN THEORY


1.
The information arrives --
that is what it does
by nature. You yield to it.
A grackle flies by.

2.
The conversation is always beginning.
Flower, say in Oahu,
or say you haven’t reached
even an island then
mid-ocean flower
name its parts
its parentage
how from Thessaly
with one blue eye and one amber
and wanting to be a girl
or from the middle ocean wall
cast this flower down
to whomsoever these tidings come
and delicately open it
sepal by sepal of course each
soft petal a hard alphabet
decipher this.
Or fallen tree whose heartwood’s hale
still the morning by what lightning felled?

3.
a Latin inquisition
among the ads
all they sell is sex and medicine
when I will be beautiful again
and meet with one amber eye and one
blue as this sound I’m looking at
tearing the flower him from him

4.
but in the Cave the sibyl’s sister
spreads oak leaves on the moss
to give her bed a prickly ease
beneath her lover’s tumbling caress
sea-poppy, rugose rose
the smell of them stands out to sea
if once you find the island
the isles I know they have such lovely eyes
in theory sequences crystal contradictions
it was the way she looked at me
for eyes are hands and lay themselves upon
the dubious witnesses of skin
their blue hands their amber hands

5.
to see one thing and think another
is a different color
in her sea-cave dreaming of her father
the whole city was built above a lake
no one saw but she heard moving
lapping underneath her in the night
and sometimes she’d wake wet from it
tall ships sailing furtive white in dawnlight
leaving for the much-marketed orient
to renew her by their absences alone
ample-witted information so many children
kayak all the way to the sun
our brother common laborer aloft

6.
I picked me out a different god
a nightly rondure and a hip with heart
or where does information flow?
hand on her belly he fell asleep
and spent his dreamland counting colors
always the same chemicals copper sulfur
charity, always the same disorder
of the eyes the keen observation turned
scorpion-wise to sting its Dante,
for we propagate by looking on us
and we ecstasy by smile
leaving Hawaii on the morning side
for a place where it is always evening
harbingers haggle in the public trees

7.
this does not issue in the amative
this is not about desire or the whim
by which an island’s penetrated
or fish chosen for the evening meal
no, it is a boat alone
on an ocean of mere imputation
and you can see it clearly in the sun glare
but not see who’s in it
till it’s too close to shore
for you to turn away
if even then you can discern
the algebra of these long last visitors
your conquistadors your amateurs

8.
let the little gods you pray to smash the boat
before their foot steps land on virgin shingle
but here they are, unrecognized, in triumph
taking to themselves all the colors of your eyes
smell of sunrise, seaweed,
a complicated synthesis they tried to make you dream
so they could grasp it from you when you


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell

from MAY DAY: Poems 2003-2005