The Value

THE VALUE


It costs as much as a cup
of espresso on a marble-topped
table in Avignon among scarlet
oleanders or the new Airbus
on its way to Geneva or as much
as Mozart on the road to Prague
in the beautiful novella by Mörike
or as much as the third woman
on the right in that photograph
of the cheese factory girls
or as much as the whole color
black which they say is not a color
at all but the absence of one,
then it costs as much as absence,
an aluminum coin,
or as a heron over a pine tree,
or a bus on fire.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Charlotte Mandell