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Threads by Robert Kelly ISBN 1-889960-11-X $18 + $2 p/h |
"In these incisive, lyrical meditations, Kelly tracks being's shining through existence as 'pure presence,' and reminds us that as wood is present in the sculpture of a god, so the tree is present in the wood. Without the mindfulness of such 'threads,' silence could be forgotten as the ground of speech, the un-namable as the heart of knowledge, and poetry as the source of language."
--Charles Borkhuis
From the Foreward by the author: "Sentences have always haunted me. Diagramming them in grammar school... Parsing. Their shapes. The bones of meaningfulness on which scraps of flesh or silks might drape for a moment. And when they're gone, the framework is still there. ...The skeleton at the feast of meaning, of love. The barebones, structures, structure itself. Articulate. Articulated skeleton of medical student: wired, wired to move as a body could. Words strung lightly on a sense of form. Threads is my fealty to the tyranny of the sentence."
Excerpt from Threads
13.
Cities don't belong to anybody
but once in Jack London's Oakland
a man was walking up San Pablo
across from the hotel when
there came towards him
on the wide sidewalk another man
in no way like him
in age, race, rank, dress or disposition
and these two men
passed each other by
mildly and peacefully, the first
looking shyly at the second
with the second looking straight ahead
without attitude, just a man
on his way somewhere with somewhere
already on his mind and no hard feelings
and the whole sky was full of stars
shouting in their quiet way with joy
at this encounter, a passage
in the street of different men
with mildness and respect as if indeed
it were a city, civility, she said,
is the highest virtue of all, she said,
because without it no other virtue can endure
among men and women,
and this last phrase she spoke
somewhat sadly, as if some other race of beings
were differently disposed.
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