Kay Ryan Poems

Like a storm
of hornets, the
little white planets
layer and relayer
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...