R O B E R T K E L L Y
__________________________________________________________THE DEATH OF GOLIATH
We are heroes in the wrong war.
Love is theology enough, she thinks,
staring down at the soldiers. under Troy's walls
She is right, but it is snowing
and nothing lasts. Ink in water.Later she gives you milk -- you call it blood,
she calls you hers, you call her mother.Another act of it begins,
measure by dying.
Christ,
this is starfish stuff,
left over biology from high school,
Darwin didn't mean you.So it's a play
after all, no time for work,
the time is coming down outside,
sky to branch, branch to snow
the time is raining
till there's no time left up there.Spiceman, spiceman Jack, dead 1965, truest of us
do your duty,
here is beauty
stretched out across the tree
and all you do is make us read:
the play begins.Goliath:
I was slain by sleight of air
and looked away
when I should have
been there, Dasein
was the death of me,
untimely speculation.
Now that it is now again
I come to you uneasy
to stitch my head back on,
improve my nerves
and sinter my senses sound.Astarte:
don't talk like that or so much.
Everything I heal I heal by touch.
(Is the play over then,
action silenced by language itself?A rhyme tells you only
that language is.Try something new,
the arrogant cartoon
where each blade of grass think of Miyazaki
is carefully another.
Mindful work is Buddha's mirth.Too many people
try to salt their soup
after they've eaten it.
This is fatal, the disease
is called Remember.Be wise: begin any play again.)
Astarte:
I have always been here
(but she doesn't say where)
always within reach.
(but she doesn't say to whose hands,
or how we get hands,
hands are harder to find than faces)
Reach is me itself.
There was and is
no reason for you to suffer.
All flesh is glass,
all glass opaque, cold,
unremembering.Thank me for each touch,
every touch breaks skin,
sends my virus in,
makes sense.Goliath:
I still hold my head – such a big
head, even I'm surprised –
in my hands I fold it, it's dripping
blood and stuff all over your meadow,
heal it, hurry,
the carpets of your endless house.Astarte:
I know no hurry,
no worry,
I am the sound of things
happening, music
is only the middle of me.I am the touch
built into the air—
if that can't heal you, Harry,
you're better off dead.Goliath:
You keep defining yourself
while I stand bleeding
how much longer can such lips as mine
bloodless now and bodiless
go on speaking? Stop telling me
about yourself, talk about me,
my needs are chronic,
this thing the world did to me
is astonishing, can't you see me,
my hands are holding my face
up to your face, my eyes
are trying to see myself in your eyes,
it is a terrible thing to come before the god
and find the god not good,
caress me. Was I so wrong
that no one will take hold of me?
Poor Goliath. Why are my sympathies always for the villain? For the dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard, for Judas and Goliath, for Nebuchadnezzar on his knees, I get down beside him and browse with the buster, I chew grass and share my cud with him, mouth to mouth imagination, and share with you, we live for each other, beast and man.Was I so wrong? Was I the winter-bearer, and still feel bad for those who I laid low? Was I the little boy David, too much loved, managed to mangle with a trick stone, a flick of the mind or a snap of luck, a quick revenge against the grown-up world? For Goliath surely was nothing but a full-grown man, full of business and father of many – how could he not be brought low by the stone I offered him so quick, the precious jewel of my childish resentment against the grown-up world, the adulterated, of those vile values, drowsing their lives out on the other side of matter.
Whereas I am material man, Malkuth, the Kingdom, in love with flesh and wood and tar and tin, I make my mirrors from it to show my sin.
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