Elephant Rocks Quotes

“All Shall Be Restored

The grains shall be collected
From the thousand shores
To which they found their way,
And the boulder restored,
And the boulder itself replaced
In the cliff, and likewise
The cliff shall rise
Or subside until the plate of earth
Is without fissure. Restoration
Knows no half-measure. It will
Not stop when the treasure and lost
Bronze horse remounts the steps.
Even this horse will founder backward
To coin, cannon, and domestic pots,
Which themselves shall bubble and
Drain back to green veins in stone.
And every word written shall lift off
Letter by letter, the backward text
Read ever briefer, ever more antic
In its effort to insist that nothing
Shall be lost.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“Why Isn't It All More Marked?

Why isn’t it all
more marked,
why isn’t every wall
graffitied, every park tree
stripped like the
stark limbs
in the house of
the chimpanzees?
Why is there bark
Left? Why do people
Cling to their
Shortening shrifts? So
Silent.
Not why people are;
Why not more violent?
We must be
So absorbent.
We must be
Almost crystals
Almost all some
Neutralizing chemical
That really does
Clarify and bring peace,
Take black sorrow
and make surcease”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“How Birds Sing One is not taxed; one need not practice; one simply tips the throat back over the spine axis and asserts the chest. The wings and the rest compress a musical squeeze which floats a series of notes upon the breeze.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“Losses

Most losses add something-
A new socket or silence,
A gap in a personal
Archipelago of islands.

We have that difference
To visit- itself
A going-on of sorts.

But there are other losses
So far beyond report
That they leave holes
In holes only

Like the ends of the
Long and lonely lives
Of castaways
Thought dead but not.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“Lacunae

Lacunae aren’t
What was going to be
Empty anyway.
They aren’t spaces
With uses, such
As margins or highway edges.
Lacunae are losses
In the middle of places-
Drops where something
Documented happened
But the document is
Gone-pond shaped
Or jagged.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“Witness

Never trust a witness.
By the time a thing is
Noticed, it has happened.
Some magician’s redirected
Our attention to the rabbit.
The best life is suspected,
Not examined.
And never trust reverse.
The mourners of the dead
Count backward from the date
Of the event, rehearsing
Its approach, investing
Final words with greatest weight,
As though weight ever
Carried what we meant:
As though he could have
Told us where he went.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems

“Rubbing Lamps

Things besides
Aladdin’s and
the golden cave
fish’s lamps
grant wishes.
In fact,
most lamps
aren’t lamp-
shaped and
happen by
accident: an
ordinary knob
goes lambent
as you twist
or a cloth turns
to silver mesh
against a dish-
something
so odd and
filled with promise
for a minute
that you spend
your only wish
wishing someone else
could see it.”
― Kay Ryan, Elephant Rocks: Poems