The Orchard Quotes

“I stood at midnight in the orchard.
There were so many stars, and yet the stars,
The very blackness of the night, though perfectly
Cold and clear, seemed to me to be insubstantial,
The whole veil of things seemed less substantial
Than the thing that moved in the dark behind me,
An unseen bird or beast, something shifting in its sleep,
Half-singing and then forgetting it was singing:
Be thou always ravished by love, starlight running
Down and pulling back the veil of the heart,

— Brigit Pegeen Kelly, from “Plants Fed On by Fawns,” The Orchard (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004)”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“Plants Fed On by Fawns"

All the flowers: the pleated leaves of the hellebore;
And the false blossom of the calla, a leaf like a petal—
The white flesh of a woman bathing— a leaf over-
Shadowing the small flowers hidden in the spadix;
And fly poison, tender little flower, whose cursed root
Pounded into a fine white powder will destroy flies.
But why kill flies? They do not trouble me. They
Are like the fruit the birds feed on. They are like
The wind in the trees, or the sap that threads all things,
The blue blood moving through branch and vine,
Through the wings of dead things and living things....
If I lift my hand? If I write to you? The letters
Can be stored in a box. Can they constitute the shape
Of a love? Can the paper be ground? Can the box
Be altar and garden plot and bed? Can there rise
From the bed the form of a two-headed creature,
A figure that looks both forward and back, keeping
Watch always, one head sleeping while the other wakes,
The bird head sleeping while the lion head wakes,
And then the changing of the guard?.... No,
The flies do not trouble me. They are like the stars
At night. Common and beautiful. They are like
My thoughts. I stood at midnight in the orchard.
There were so many stars, and yet the stars,
The very blackness of the night, though perfectly
Cold and clear, seemed to me to be insubstantial,
The whole veil of things seemed less substantial
Than the thing that moved in the dark behind me,
An unseen bird or beast, something shifting in its sleep,
Half-singing and then forgetting it was singing:
Be thou always ravished by love, starlight running
Down and pulling back the veil of the heart,
And then the water that does not exist opening up
Before one, dark as wine, and the unveiled figure
Of the self stepping unclothed, sweetly stripped
Of its leaf, into starlight and the shadow of night,
The cold water warm around the narrow ankles,
The body at its most weightless, a thing so durable
It will— like the carved stone figures holding up
The temple roof— stand and remember its gods
Long after those gods have been forsaken.”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“The Dragon"

The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms
The size of melons; and golden, too, like melons,
They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast
Above the wet black compost. And because
The light was very bright it was hard to see them,
And harder still to see what hung between them.
A snake hung between them. The bees held up a snake,
Lifting each side of his narrow neck, just below
The pointed head, and in this way, very slowly
They carried the snake through the garden,
The snake’s long body hanging down, its tail dragging
The ground, as if the creature were a criminal
Being escorted to execution or a child king
To the throne. I kept thinking the snake
Might be a hose, held by two ghostly hands,
But the snake was a snake, his body green as the grass
His tail divided, his skin oiled, the way the male member
Is oiled by the female’s juices, the greenness overbright,
The bees gold, the winged serpent moving silently
Through the air. There was something deadly in it,
Or already dead. Something beyond the report
Of beauty. I laid my face against my arm, and there
It stayed for the length of time it takes two swarms
Of bees to carry a snake through a wide garden,
Past a sleeping swan, past the dead roses nailed
To the wall, past the small pond. And when
I looked up the bees and the snake were gone,
But the garden smelled of broken fruit, and across
The grass a shadow lay for which there was no source,
A narrow plinth dividing the garden, and the air
Was like the air after a fire, or before a storm,
Ungodly still, but full of dark shapes turning.”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“Be thou always ravished by love, starlight running
Down and pulling back the veil of the heart,

— Brigit Pegeen Kelly, from “Plants Fed On by Fawns,” The Orchard: Poems (BOA Editions,2004)”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“And I knew you, a swelling in the heart,
A silence in the heart, the wild wind-blown grass
Burning–as the sun falls below the earth–
Brighter than a bed of lilies struck by snow.

— Brigit Pegeen Kelly, from “Elegy,” The Orchard: Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 2004)”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“[A]nd the unveiled figure
Of the self stepping unclothed, sweetly stripped
Of its leaf, into starlight, and the shadow of night,
The cold water warm around the narrow ankles,
The body at its most weightless, a thing so durable
It will–like the carved stone figures holding up
The temple roof–stand and remember its gods
Long after those gods have been forsaken.

—Brigit Pegeen Kelly, from “Plants Fed On by Fawns,” The Orchard (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004)”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“…and the air
Was like the air after a fire, or the air before a storm,
Ungodly still, but full of dark shapes turning.

from “The Dragon”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“The Satyr's Heart"

Now I rest my head on the satyr's carved chest,
The hollow where the heart would have been, if sandstone
Had a heart, if a headless goat man could have a heart.
His neck rises to a dull point, points upward
To something long gone, elusive, and at his feet
The small flowers swarm, earnest and sweet, a clamor
Of white, a clamor of blue, and black the sweating soil
They breed in...If I sit without moving, how quickly
Things change, birds turning tricks in the trees,
Colorless birds and those with color, the wind fingering
The twigs, and the furred creatures doing whatever
Furred creatures do. So, and so. There is the smell of fruit
And the smell of wet coins. There is the sound of a bird
Crying, and the sound of water that does not move...
If I pick the dead iris? If I wave it above me
Like a flag, a blazoned flag? My fanfare? Little fare
with which I buy my way, making things brave? The way
Now I bend over and with my foot turn up a stone,
And there they are: the armies of pale creatures who
Without cease or doubt sew the sweet sad earth.”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard

“Elegy"

Wind buffs the waterstained stone cupids and shakes
Old rain from the pines’ low branches, small change
Spilling over the graves the years have smashed
With a hammer— forget this, forget that, leave no
Stone unturned. The grass grows high, sweet-smelling,
Many-footed, ever-running. No one tends it. No
One comes....And where am I now?.... Is this a beginning,
A middle, or an end?.... Before I knew you I stood
middle, or an end?.... Before I knew you I stood
In this place. Now I forsake the past as I knew it
To feed you into it. But that is not right. You step
Into it. I find you here, in the shifting grass,
In the late light, as if you had always been here.
Behind you two torn black cedars flame white
Against the darkening fields.... If you turn to me,
Quiet man? If you turn? If I speak softly?
If I say, Take off, take off your glasses.... Let me see
Your sightless eyes?.... I will be beautiful then....
Look, the heart moves as the moths do, scuttering
Like a child’s thoughts above this broken stone
And that. And I lie down. I lie down in the long grass,
Something I am not given to doing, and I feel
The weight of your hand on my belly, and the wind
Parts the grasses, and the distance spills through—
The glassy fields, the black black earth, the pale air
Streaming headlong toward the abbey’s far stones
And streaming back again.... The drowned scent of lilacs
By the abbey, it is a drug. It drives one senseless.
It drives one blind. You can cup the enormous lilac cones
In your hands— ripened, weightless, and taut—
And it is like holding someone’s heart in your hands,
Or holding a cloud of moths. I lift them up, my hands.
Grave man, bend toward me. Lay your face.... here....
Rest....! took the stalks of the dead wisteria
From the glass jar propped against the open grave
And put in the shell-shaped yellow wildflowers
I picked along the road. I cannot name them.
Bread and butter, perhaps. I am not good
With names. But nameless you walked toward me
And I knew you, a swelling in the heart,
A silence in the heart, the wild wind-blown grass
Burning— as the sun falls below the earth—
Brighter than a bed of lilies struck by snow.

— Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard: Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 2004)”
― Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard