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Poems

Album Read Poem

Death has a life
of  its own.

See
how its album
has grown in
a year and how
the sharp blot of it
has softened
till those could
almost be shadows
behind the
cherry blossoms
in this shot.

In fact you
couldn’t prove
they’re not.

All You Did Read Poem

There doesn’t seem
to be a crack.

A
higher pin cannot
be set.

Nor can
you go back.

You
hadn’t even known
the face was vertical.

All you did was
walk into a room.

The tipping up
from flat was
gradual, you
must assume.

All Your Horses Read Poem

Say when rain
cannot make
you more wet
or a certain
thought can’t
deepen and yet
you think it again:
you have lost
count.

A larger
amount is
no longer a
larger amount.

There has been
a collapse; perhaps
in the night.

Like a rupture
in water (which
can’t rupture
of course).

All
your horses
broken out with
all your horses.

Bait Goat Read Poem

There is a
distance where
magnets pull,
we feel, having
held them
back.

Likewise
there is a
distance where
words attract.

Set one out
like a bait goat
and wait and
seven others
will approach.

But watch out:
roving packs can
pull your word
away.

You
find your stake
yanked and some
rough bunch
to thank.

Blast Read Poem

The holes have
almost left the
sky and the blanks
the paths—the
patches next to
natural, corroborated
by the incidental
sounds of practical
activities and crows,
themselves exhibiting
many of the earmarks
of the actual.

This
must have happened
many times before,
we must suppose.

Almost a pulse
if we could speed
it up: the repeated
seeking of our several
senses toward each
other, fibers trying to
reach across the gap
as fast as possible,
following a blast.

A Certain Kind of Eden Read Poem

It seems like you could, but
you can’t go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.

It’s all too deep for that.

You’ve overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you’re given
for control.

You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.

You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens.

But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.

Cloud Read Poem

A blue stain
creeps across
the deep pile
of the evergreens.

From inside the
forest it seems
like an interior
matter, something
wholly to do
with trees, a color
passed from one
to another, a
requirement
to which they
submit unflinchingly
like soldiers or
brave people
getting older.

Then the sun
comes back and
it’s totally over.

Crocodile Tears Read Poem

The one sincere
crocodile has
gone dry eyed
for years.

Why
bother crying
crocodile tears.

Cut Out For It Read Poem

Cut out
as a horse
is cut
from the
pack.

Peeled
off, but
a long time
back.

Now
such a feeling
for the way
they touch
and shift
as one, the
beauty when
they run.

THE FABRIC OF LIFE Read Poem

It is very stretchy.

We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy.

It is complexly
woven.

That much too
has pretty well been
proven.

We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—

hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
attacking threads
far beyond anything
we would have said
connects.

Felix Crow Read Poem

Crow school
is basic and
short as a rule—
just the rudiments
of quid pro crow
for most students.

Then each lives out
his unenlightened
span, adding his
bit of blight
to the collected
history of pushing out
the sweeter species;
briefly swaggering the
swagger of his
aggravating ancestors
down my street.

And every time
I like him
when we meet.

Flamingo Watching Read Poem

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings a city’s worth
of furbelows.

She seems
unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,
and flexible to the point
of oddity.

Perched on
those legs, anything she does
seems like an act.

Descending
on her egg or draping her head
along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous
to convince an audience
she’s serious.

The natural elect,
they think, would be less pink,
less able to relax their necks,
less flamboyant in general.

They privately expect that it’s some
poorly jointed bland grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

Houdini Read Poem

Each escape
involved some art,
some hokum, and
at least a brief
incomprehensible
exchange between
the man and metal
during which the
chains were not
so much broken
as he and they
blended.

At the
end of each such
mix he had to
extract himself.

It
was the hardest
part to get right
routinely: breaking
back into the
same Houdini.

In Case of Complete Reversal Read Poem

Born into each seed
is a small anti-seed
useful in case of some
complete reversal:
a tiny but powerful
kit for adapting it
to the unimaginable.

If we could crack the
fineness of the shell
we’d see the
bundled minuses
stacked as in a safe,
ready for use
if things don’t
go well.

The Late Worm Read Poem

The worms
which had been
thick are thin
upon the ground
now that it's gotten
later.

They stick
against the path,
their pink chapped
and their inching
labored.

It's a
matter of moisture
isn't it?

Time, a
measure of wet,
shrinking, the
drier you get.

Linens Read Poem

There are charms
that forestall harm.

The house bristles
with opportunities
for stasis: refolding
the linens along
their creases, keeping
the spoons and chairs
in their right places.

Nobody needs to
witness one’s exquisite
care with the napkins
for the napkins
to have been the act
that made the fact
unhappen.

Miser Time Read Poem

Miser time grows
profligate near the
end: unpinching
and unplanning,
abandoning the
whole idea of
savings.

It’s hard
to understand
but time apparently
expands with its
diminishing.

The
door thrown wide
on sliding hills of high-
denomination bills and
nothing much to buy.

New Rooms Read Poem

The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms—just
tack them up
like an interior
tent.

Oh but
the new holes
aren’t where
the windows
went.

The Obsoletion of a Language Read Poem

We knew it
would happen,
one of the laws.

And that it
would be this
sudden.

Words
become a chewing
action of the jaws
and mouth, unheard
by the only other
citizen there was
on earth.

Paired Things Read Poem

Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?

And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?

So many paired things seem odd.

Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?

Party Ship Read Poem

You are a
land I can’t
stand leaving
and can’t not.

My party ship
is pulling out.

We all have
hats.

I try to
toot some notes
you’ll understand
but this was not
our instrument
or plan.

Pinhole Read Poem

We say
pinhole.

A pin hole
of light.

We
can’t imagine
how bright
more of it
could be,
the way
this much
defeats night.

It almost
isn’t fair,
whoever
poked this,
with such
a small act
to vanquish
blackness.

Repetition Read Poem

Trying to walk
the same way
to the same store
takes high-wire
balance:
each step
not exactly
as before
risks chasms
of flatness.

One stumble
alone and
nothing
happens.

Few are
the willing
and fewer
the champions.

REPULSIVE THEORY Read Poem

Little has been made
of the soft, skirting action
of magnets reversed,
while much has been
made of attraction.

But is it not this pillowy
principle of repulsion
that produces the
doily edges of oceans
or the arabesques of thought?

And do these cutout coasts
and incurved rhetorical beaches
not baffle the onslaught
of the sea or objectionable people
and give private life
what small protection it's got?

Praise then the oiled motions
of avoidance, the pearly
convolutions of all that
slides off or takes a
wide berth; praise every
eddying vacancy of Earth,
all the dimpled depths
of pooling space, the whole
swirl set up by fending-off—
extending far beyond the personal,
I'm convinced—
immense and good
in a cosmological sense:
unpressing us against
each other, lending
the necessarynever
to never-ending.

Salvage Read Poem

The wreck
is a fact.

The worst
has happened.

The salvage trucks
back in and
the salvage men
begin to sort
and stack,
whistling as
they work.

Thanks be
to god—again—
for extractable elements
which are not
carriers of pain,
for this periodic
table at which
the self-taught
salvagers disassemble
the unthinkable
to the unthought.

Salvations Read Poem

Like hope
it springs
eternal,
existing in
discrete but
spherical
units, a
mist of total
but encapsulated
salvational
events.

If
any two of
these bubbles
bang against
each other no
walls collapse
or double to
a larger chamber
unlike the halls
of soap.

Sharks' Teeth Read Poem

Everything contains some
silence.

Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it.

An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark.

Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

Soft Read Poem

In harmony with the rule of irony—
which requires that we harbor the enemy
on this side of the barricade—the shell
of the unborn eagle or pelican, which is made
to give protection till the great beaks can harden,
is the first thing to take up poison.

The mineral case is soft and gibbous
as the moon in a lake—an elastic,
rubbery, nightmare water that won't break.

Elsewhere, also, I see the mockeries of struggle,
a softness over people.

Still Start Read Poem

As if engine
parts could be
wrenched out
at random and
the car would
still start and
sound even,
hearts can go
with chambers
broken open.

Surfaces Read Poem

Surfaces serve
their own purposes,
strive to remain
constant (all lives
want that).

There is
a skin, not just on
peaches but on oceans
(note the telltale
slough of foam on beaches).

Sometimes it’s loose,
as in the case
of cats: you feel how a
second life slides
under it.

Sometimes it
fits.

Take glass.

Sometimes it outlasts
its underside.

Take reefs.

The private lives of surfaces
are innocent, not devious.

Take the one-dimensional
belief of enamel in itself,
the furious autonomy
of luster (crush a pearl—
it’s powder), the whole
curious seamlessness
of how we’re each surrounded
and what it doesn’t teach.

Tenderness and Rot Read Poem

Tenderness and rot
share a border.

And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.

No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.

One is not
two countries.

One is not meat
corrupting.

It is important
to stay sweet
and loving.

Thin Read Poem

How anything
is known
is so thin—
a skin of ice
over a pond
only birds might
confidently walk
upon.

A bird's
worth of weight
or one bird-weight
of Wordsworth.

Turtle Read Poem

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.

Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing-case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes.

Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible.

With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish.

She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.

Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.

Blandeur Read Poem

If it please God,   

let less happen.

Even out Earth's   

rondure, flatten   

Eiger, blanden

the Grand Canyon.

Make valleys

slightly higher,   

widen fissures   

to arable land,   

remand your

terrible glaciers   

and silence

their calving,   

halving or doubling

all geographical features   

toward the mean.

Unlean against our hearts.

Withdraw your grandeur   

from these parts.

Crown Read Poem

Too much rain

loosens trees.

In the hills giant oaks

fall upon their knees.

You can touch parts

you have no right to—

places only birds

should fly to.

Home to Roost Read Poem

The chickens

are circling and

blotting out the   

day.

The sun is   

bright, but the   

chickens are in   

the way.

Yes,

the sky is dark

with chickens,   

dense with them.

They turn and   

then they turn   

again.

These   

are the chickens

you let loose

one at a time

and small—

various breeds.

Now they have   

come home

to roost—all

the same kind

at the same speed.

Carrying a Ladder Read Poem

We are always

really carrying

a ladder, but it’s

invisible.

We

only know

something’s

the matter:

something precious

crashes; easy doors

prove impassable.

Or, in the body,

there’s too much

swing or off-

center gravity.

And, in the mind,

a drunken capacity,

access to out-of-range

apples.

As though

one had a way to climb

out of the damage

and apology.

Atlas Read Poem

Extreme exertion

isolates a person

from help,

discovered Atlas.

Once a certain

shoulder-to-burden

ratio collapses,

there is so little

others can do:

they can’t

lend a hand

with Brazil

and not stand

on Peru.

He Lit a Fire with Icicles Read Poem

For W.

G.

Sebald, 1944-2001







This was the work

of St.

Sebolt, one

of his miracles:

he lit a fire with

icicles.

He struck

them like a steel

to flint, did St.

Sebolt.

It

makes sense

only at a certain

body heat.

How

cold he had

to get to learn

that ice would

burn.

How cold

he had to stay.

When he could

feel his feet

he had to

back away.

A Ball Rolls on a Point Read Poem

The whole ball

of who we are

presses into

the green baize

at a single tiny

spot.

An aural

track of crackle

betrays our passage

through the

fibrous jungle.

It’s hot and

desperate.

Insects

spring out of it.

The pressure is

intense, and the

sense that we’ve

lost proportion.

As though bringing

too much to bear

too locally were

our decision.

A Hundred Bolts of Satin Read Poem

All you

have to lose

is one

connection

and the mind   

uncouples

all the way back.

It seems

to have been

a train.

There seems

to have been

a track.

The things

that you

unpack

from the

abandoned cars   

cannot sustain   

life: a crate of   

tractor axles,   

for example,

a dozen dozen   

clasp knives,   

a hundred   

bolts of satin—

perhaps you   

specialized   

more than   

you imagined.

Poems by Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow and she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Poems