Cover Page

SAY UNCLE

ALSO BY KAY RYAN

Elephant Rocks

Flamingo Watching

Strangely Marked Metal

Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends

SAY UNCLE

poems

by

KAY RYAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these poems first appeared:

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: Among English Verbs; COLUMBIA: Weakness and Doubt, Drops in the Bucket, Failure 2, Gaps, Your Face Will Stick, Silence Islands, The Museum of False Starts, Agreement; THE GEOR-GIA REVIEW: Waste; THE JOURNAL: Help, Gravity; THE NEW YORKER: Blandeur, The Excluded Animals, The Old Cosmologists, Yeses, Failure, Deferred Silence, A Hundred Bolts of Satin, Patience, Crown, The Job; THE PARIS REVIEW: Crash, Lime Light, Dutch, Matrigupta; PARNASSUS: Forgetting; PARTISAN REVIEW: Death by Fruit; PLOUGHSHARES: Corners, Mockingbird; POETRY: Grazing Horses, Don’t Look Back, Herring, The Pieces That Fall to Earth, Winter Fear, Why We Must Struggle, The Fabric of Life, Test, Two More and Up Goes the Donkey; THE RECORDER: Bad Day; SALON: Nothing Ventured; SOLO: Ticket; THE SOUTHERN REVIEW: Water under the Bridge, Beasts, Composition, Diamonds, Coming and Going, Say Uncle, It’s Always Darkest Just before the Dawn, Great Thoughts; THE THREEPENNY REVIEW: Chemise, Cheshire; THE YALE REVIEW: That Will to Divest, The Catch, The Pass; WATER/STONE: Blunt; ZYZZYVA: Star Block

“That Will to Divest” also appeared in THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1999 (Scribner, 1999). “Angles of Sun” appeared in LIGHTHOUSE POEMS (Thornwillow Press, 2000). “Patience” was reprinted in the pamphlet series “Poems in the Waiting Room” by the Poetry Club of the City Literary Institute of London.

Some of these poems have appeared in an Aralia Press fine press edition, That Will to Divest, 1999.

Dedication

For Carol

SAY UNCLE

SAY UNCLE

Every day

you say,

Just one

more try.

Then another

irrecoverable

day slips by.

You will

say ankle,

you will

say knuckle;

why won’t

you why

won’t you

say uncle?

CORNERS

All but saints

and hermits

mean to paint

themselves

toward an exit

leaving a

pleasant ocean

of azure or jonquil

ending neatly

at the doorsill.

But sometimes

something happens:

a minor dislocation

by which the doors

and windows

undergo a

small rotation

to the left a little

—but repeatedly.

It isn’t

obvious immediately.

Only toward evening

and from the

farthest corners

of the houses

of the painters

comes a chorus

of individual keening

as of kenneled dogs

someone is mistreating.

STAR BLOCK

There is no such thing

as star block.

We do not think of

locking out the light

of other galaxies.

It is light

so rinsed of impurities

(heat, for instance)

that it excites

no antibodies in us.

Yet people are

curiously soluble

in starlight.

Bathed in its

absence of insistence

their substance

loosens willingly,

their bright

designs dissolve.

Not proximity

but distance

burns us with love.

MOCKINGBIRD

Nothing whole

is so bold,

we sense. Nothing

not cracked is

so exact and

of a piece. He’s

the distempered

emperor of parts,

the king of patch,

the master of

pastiche, who so

hashes other birds’

laments, so minces

their capriccios, that

the dazzle of dispatch

displaces the originals.

As though brio

really does beat feeling,

the way two aces

beat three hearts

when it’s cards

you’re dealing.

A HUNDRED BOLTS OF SATIN

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.

THE EXCLUDED ANIMALS

Only a certain

claque of beasts

is part of the

crèche racket

forming a

steamy-breathed

semicircle

around the

baby basket.

Anything more

exotic than

a camel

is out of luck

this season.

Not that the

excluded animals envy

the long-lashed

sycophants;

cormorants

don’t toady,

nor do toads

adore anybody

for any reason.

Nor do the

unchosen alligators,

grinning their

three-foot grin

as they laze

in the blankety waters

like the blankets on Him.

BLANDEUR

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.

COMPOSITION

Language is a diluted aspect of matter.

—Joseph Brodsky

No. Not diluted.

Flaked; wafered;

but not watered.

Language is matter

leafing like a book

with the good taste

of rust and exposure

the way ironwork

petals near the coast.

But so many more

colors than rust:

or, argent, others—

a vast heraldic shield

of beautiful readable

fragments revealed

as Earth delaminates:

how the metals scatter,

how matter turns

animate.

PATIENCE

Patience is

wider than one

once envisioned,

with ribbons

of rivers

and distant

ranges and

tasks undertaken

and finished

with modest

relish by

natives in their

native dress.

Who would

have guessed

it possible

that waiting

is sustainable—

a place with

its own harvests.

Or that in

time’s fullness

the diamonds

of patience

couldn’t be

distinguished

from the genuine

in brilliance

or hardness.

COMING AND GOING

There is a

recently discovered

order, neither

sponges nor fishes,

which is never

at the mercy

of conditions.

If currents shift,

these fleshy zeppelins

can reverse directions

from inside—

their guts are

so easily modified.

Coming versus going

is therefore

not the crisis

it is for people,

who have to scramble

to keep anything

from showing

when we see

what we can’t see

coming, going.

NOTHING VENTURED

Nothing exists as a block

and cannot be parceled up.

So if nothing’s ventured

it’s not just talk;

it’s the big wager.

Don’t you wonder

how people think

the banks of space

and time don’t matter?

How they’ll drain

the big tanks down to

slime and salamanders

and want thanks?

THAT WILL TO DIVEST

Action creates

a taste

for itself.

Meaning: once

you’ve swept

the shelves

of spoons

and plates

you kept

for guests,

it gets harder

not to also

simplify the larder,

not to dismiss

rooms, not to

divest yourself

of all the chairs

but one, not

to test what

singleness can bear,

once you’ve begun.

WINTER FEAR

Is it just winter

or is this worse.

Is this the year

when outer damp

obscures a deeper curse

that spring can’t fix,

when gears that

turn the earth

won’t shift the view,

when clouds won’t lift

though all the skies

go blue.

GRAZING HORSES

Sometimes the

green pasture

of the mind

tilts abruptly.

The grazing horses

struggle crazily

for purchase

on the frictionless

nearly vertical

surface. Their

furniture-fine

legs buckle

on the incline,

unhorsed by slant

they weren’t

designed to climb

and can’t.

WASTE

Not even waste

is inviolate.

The day misspent,

the love misplaced,

has inside it

the seed of redemption.

Nothing is exempt

from resurrection.

It is tiresome

how the grass

re-ripens, greening

all along the punched

and mucked horizon

once the bison

have moved on,

leaning into hunger

and hard luck.

FORGETTING

Forgetting takes space.

Forgotten matters displace

as much anything else as

anything else. We must

skirt unlabeled crates

as though it made sense

and take them when we go

to other states.

THE FOURTH WISE MAN

The fourth wise man

disliked travel. If

you walk, there’s the

gravel. If you ride,

there’s the camel’s attitude.

He far preferred

to be inside in solitude

to contemplate the star

that had been getting

so much larger

and more prolate lately—

stretching vertically

(like the souls of martyrs)

toward the poles

(or like the yawns of babies).

BEASTS

Time lingers

quietly in attics.

Romantics are

always fingering

some discolored

fabric or other,

feeling a deep

nostalgia for sepia,

a mellow sadness

at what keeps

but yellows.

But other people

don’t trust ambering

or court the filigrees

of rust. They’ve

seen lost greens

of memory ignite,

dead dogs released,

and don’t invite

the rainbow beasts.

GAPS

Gaps don’t

just happen.

There is a

generative element

inside them,

a welling motion

as when cold

waters shoulder

up through

warmer oceans.

And where gaps

choose to widen,

coordinates warp,

even in places

constant since

the oldest maps.

THE FABRIC OF LIFE

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.

HELP

Imagine help

as a syllable,

awkward but utterable.

How would it work

and in which distress?

How would one gauge

the level of duress

at which to pitch

the plea? How bad

would something

have to be?

It’s hard,

coming from a planet

where if we needed something

we had it.

AGREEMENT

The satisfactions

of agreement are

immediate as sugar—

a melting of the

granular, a syrup

that lingers, shared

not singular.

Many prefer it.

THE OLD COSMOLOGISTS

When their cosmology

grows soft and spongy

and unreal, the

old cosmologists

get touchy. They feel

they should have

held it off, they should

have known about it

in advance, they

should have stretched

the interstellar cloth

or sown a row of stars

along a rift just to the left

of Mars or guessed

about a pin-sized patch

of purple gas or grafted

comets tail-to-tail,

and thus or otherwise

suppressed the drift;

as if change were not

something that just happens

at certain stages

but a private test failed

moment by moment

as age is.

THE PASS

Even in climes

without snow

one cannot go

forward sometimes.

Things test you.

You are part of

the Donners or

part of the rescue:

a muleteer in

earflaps; a

formerly hearty

Midwestern farmer

perhaps. Both

parties trapped

within sight

of the pass.

THE PIECES THAT FALL TO EARTH

One could

almost wish

they wouldn’t;

they are so

far apart,

so random.

One cannot

wait, cannot

abandon waiting.

The three or

four occasions

of their landing

never fade.

Should there

be more, there

will never be

enough to make

a pattern

that can equal

the commanding

way they matter.

DON’T LOOK BACK

This is not

a problem

for the neckless.

Fish cannot

recklessly

swivel their heads

to check

on their fry;

no one expects

this. They are

torpedoes of

disinterest,

compact capsules

that rely

on the odds

for survival,

unfollowed by

the exact and modest

number of goslings

the S-necked

goose is—

who if she

looks back

acknowledges losses

and if she does not

also loses.

IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST JUST BEFORE THE DAWN

But how dark

is darkest?

Does it get

jet—or tar—

black; does it

glint and increase

in hardness

or turn viscous?

Are there stages

of darkness

and chips

to match against

its increments,

holding them

up to our blindness,

estimating when

we’ll have the

night behind us?

BLUNT

If we could love

the blunt

and not

the point

we would

almost constantly

have what we want.

What is the

blunt of this

I would ask you

our conversation

weeding up

like the Sargasso.

DIAMONDS

Is the snail

sharpened

by crawling

over diamonds?

Is her foot

hardened

so it can’t

carry her?

No. Snails

make mucus.

Even the

most precious

barriers

to lettuce

are useless.

HERRING

A thousand

tiny silver

thoughtlets

play in the mind,

untarnished

as herring.

They shutter

like blinds,

then sliver,

then utterly

vanish.

Is it unkind

to hope

some will

eat others;

is it uncaring?

THE MUSEUM OF FALSE STARTS

It is incredibly

beautiful but

unfinished—

actually hardly

more than imagined.

There are the beginnings

of a gallery of

ribbon-lovely thoughts

that vanish,

shadowy gardens

briefly visible

at shifting angles,

and, caught

in an ancient ash,

the single spiraling

horn of an otherwise

unfashioned animal.

THE SILENCE ISLANDS

These are the

Silence Islands,

where what outsiders

would consider

nearly imperceptible

aural amusements

land like coconuts

on the crystalline

hammers and anvils

of the native inhabitants.

Theirs is a refinement

so exquisite that,

for example, to rhyme

anything with hibiscus

is interdicted anytime

children or anyone weakened

by sickness is expected.

TICKET

This is the ticket

I failed to spend.

It is still in my pocket

at the fair’s end.

It is not only

suffering or grief

or even boredom

of which we are

offered more than

enough.

THIEF

Like a watch thief

fitted with secret pockets

he felt a downward tug

on his spring jacket.

Like spring grasses

harboring crickets

he emitted a suspicious

ticking racket.

All spring

he had the feeling

that he was the one

doing the stealing.

CHESHIRE

It’s not the cat,

it’s the smile that

lasts, toothy

and ruthless.

It’s facts like this

we like to resist—

how our parts

may lack allegiance

to the whole;

how the bonds

may be more casual

than we know; how

much of us

might vanish

and how well

some separate part

might manage.

YESES

Just behind

the door,

a second.

But smaller

by a few inches.

Behind which

a third again

diminishes.

Then more

and more,

forming a

foreshortened

corridor or

niche of yeses

ending in

a mouse’s

entrance

with a knob

too small

to pinch.

DEATH BY FRUIT

Only the crudest

of the vanitas set

ever thought

you had to get

a skull into the picture

whether you needed

its tallowy color

near the grapes

or not. Others,

stopping to consider

shapes and textures,

often discovered

that eggs or aubergines

went better, or leeks

or a plate of string beans.

A skull is so dominant.

It takes so much

bunched-up drapery,

such a ponderous

display of ornate cutlery,

just to make it

less prominent.

The greatest masters

preferred the

subtlest vanitas,

modestly trusting

to fruit baskets

to whisper

ashes to ashes,

relying on the

poignant exactness

of oranges to release

like a citrus mist

the always fresh fact

of how hard we resist

how briefly we’re pleased.

GREAT THOUGHTS

Great thoughts

do not nourish

small thoughts

as parents do children.

Like the eucalyptus,

they make the soil

beneath them barren.

Standing in a

grove of them

is hideous.

TEST

Imagine a surface

so still and vast

that it could test

exactly what

is set in motion

when a single stone

is cast into its ocean.

Possessed of a calm

so far superior

to people’s, it alone

could be assessed

ideally irascible.

In such a case,

if ripples yawed

or circles wobbled

in their orbits

like spun plates,

it would be the law

and not so personal

that what drops warps

and what warps dissipates.

CROWN

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.

ANGLES OF SUN

Only some

angles of sun

can grow corn,

which must be

drawn up by heat.

Where it is

barely warm

no one even

wants to eat

that kind of

light-fattened kernel

packed tight

like feed-lot beef cattle.

When obliquely lit

people think sweet,

they delight

in the tentative,

the partial, the

dish of berries

whose purple

varies.

BAD DAY

Not every day

is a good day

for the elfin tailor.

Some days

the stolen cloth

reveals what it

was made for:

a handsome weskit

or the jerkin

of an elfin sailor.

Other days

the tailor

sees a jacket

in his mind

and sets about

to find the fabric.

But some days

neither the idea

nor the material

presents itself;

and these are

the hard days

for the tailor elf.

AMONG ENGLISH VERBS

Among English verbs

to die is oddest in its

eagerness to be dead,

immodest in its

haste to be told—

a verb alchemical

in the head:

one speck of its gold

and a whole life’s lead.

LIME LIGHT

One can’t work

by lime light.

A bowlful

right at

one’s elbow

produces no

more than

a baleful

glow against

the kitchen table.

The fruit purveyor’s

whole unstable

pyramid

doesn’t equal

what daylight did.

WHY WE MUST STRUGGLE

If we have not struggled

as hard as we can

at our strongest

how will we sense

the shape of our losses

or know what sustains

us longest or name

what change costs us,

saying how strange

it is that one sector

of the self can step in

for another in trouble,

how loss activates

a latent double, how

we can feed

as upon nectar

upon need?

DROPS IN THE BUCKET

At first

each drop

makes its

own pock

against the tin.

In time

there is a

thin lacquer

which is

layered and

relayered

till there’s

a quantity

of water

with its

own skin

and sense

of purpose,

shocked at

each new violation

of its surface.

THE JOB

Imagine that

the job were

so delicate

that you could

seldom—almost

never—remember

it. Impossible

work, really.

Like placing

pebbles exactly

where they were

already. The

steadiness it

takes . . . and

to what end?

It’s so easy

to forget again.

CLOSELY WATCHED THINGS

A too closely watched flower

blossoms the wrong color.

Excess attention to the jonquil

turns it gentian. Flowers

need it tranquil to get

their hues right. Some

only open at midnight.

DUTCH

Much of life

is Dutch

one-digit

operations

in which

legions of

big robust

people crouch

behind

badly cracked

dike systems

attached

by the thumbs

their wide

balloon-pantsed rumps

up-ended to the

northern sun

while, back

in town, little

black-suspendered

tulip magnates

stride around.

CRASH

Slip is one

law of crash

among dozens.

There is also

shift—

moving a

granite lozenge

to the left

a little,

sending down

a cliff.

Also toggles:

the idle flip

that trips

the rails

trains travel.

No act

or refusal

to act, no

special grip

or triple lock

or brake stops

crash; crash

quickens

on resistance

like a legal system

out of Dickens.

GRAVITY

Weight is a gift

you can’t simulate.

It is useless if

you take it on too late.

The post-pupid

butterfly looks stupid

walking with her wings.

Some are, some are not,

weight-bearing things.

CHEMISE

What would the self

disrobed look like,

the form undraped?

There is a flimsy cloth

we can’t take off—

some last chemise

we can’t escape—

a hope more intimate

than paint

to please.

DEFERRED SILENCE

There is a

deferred silence

which only follows

a deferred sound.

As when an oak falls

when no one is around.

The violence waits

for someone to approach

to have just stopped.

There is that ozone

freshness to the aftershock.

ATTENTION

As strong as

the suction cups

on the octopus

are the valves

of the attention.

If threatened

or pulled off

they leave welts

and pink rings

but also

can unstick

unfelt

from things.

FAILURE

Like slime

inside a

stagnant tank

its green

deepening

from lime

to emerald

a dank

but less

ephemeral

efflorescence

than success

is in general.

MATRIGUPTA

of Ujjain, India, wrote a poem that so pleased Rajah Vicrama Ditya HE WAS GIVEN THE ENTIRE STATE OF KASHMIR. The poet ruled Kashmir for five years (118–123) AND THEN ABDICATED TO BECOME A RECLUSE.

—Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

(What a Trojan horse)

thought Matrigupta,

rewarded for his verse

by Rajah Ditya

with one of the nicest

states in India.

(Why couldn’t it

have been a gold watch

or an inscribed plate?

I’ll never write again

at this rate.)

“I am too blessed,”

went the little thank-you

poem he had rehearsed,

but already his words

were getting reversed

and he said, “I am

blue tressed,” which was

only the first indication

of how things were in Kashmir

before his abdication.

WEAKNESS AND DOUBT

Weakness and doubt

are symbionts

famous throughout

the fungal orders,

which admire pallors,

rusts, grey talcums,

the whole palette

of dusts and powders

of the rot kingdom

and do not share

our kind’s disgust

at dissolution,

following the

interplay of doubt

and weakness

as a robust

sort of business;

the way we

love construction,

they love hollowing.

FAILURE 2

There could be nutrients

in failure—

deep amendments

to the shallow soil

of wishes.

Think of the

dark and bitter

flavors of

black ales

and peasant loaves.

Think of licorices.

Think about

the tales of how

Indians put fishes

under corn plants.

Next time hope

relinquishes a form,

think about that.

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

That’s water under

the bridge, we say,

siding with the bridge

and no wonder,

given the sloping ways

of water which

grows so grey

and oily, toiling

slowly downward,

its wide dented

slide ever onward;

we aren’t demented.

YOUR FACE WILL STICK

However bland we all

begin when picked

from the common

stock of cherubim,

your face will stick.

There will be

a spot at which

you hear the click.

Your baby ears—

pink shells—will

prick, your look grow

pixieish or dour,

fixed upon the

inner notch or

catch you can’t resist,

like clocks set up

to strike the hour.

SURVIVAL SKILLS

Here is the virtue

in not looking up:

you will be the one

who finds the overhang

out of the sun

and something for a cup.

You will rethink meat;

you will know you have

to eat and will eat.

Despair and hope you keep

remote. You will not

think much about the boat

that sank or other boats.

When you can, you sleep.

You can go on nearly forever.

If you ever are delivered

you are not delivered.

You know now, you were

always a survivor.

AND ALL BECOMES AS BEFORE

—The Legend of the Baal-Shem,

Martin Buber

So why do we want to go

if this travel is

so without profit

if not even a souvenir pebble

lodges in a boot waffle

or a half ticket sticks

in the corner of a pocket

if it is so perfect

that it takes every tick

of its private clock back

patting us down at the exit

like a bank dick

pushing us back into traffic?

TWO MORE, AND UP GOES THE DONKEY

An old cry at fairs, the showman having promised his credulous hearers that as soon as enough pennies are collected his donkey will balance himself on the top of a pole or ladder. Always a matter of “two more pennies,”the trick is never performed.

—Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Old men

who were boys then

continue to imagine

how it would have been

to see a donkey

balancing above them.

Some see all four

small hooves

compressed on

the post top;

some see one.

It depends upon

which penny

wasn’t spent,

which trick

wasn’t done.

THE CATCH

Among nets

some are stout

and cast by

rubber-clad

sailors who

venture out

in boats and

talk of knots

and floats and

diesels and

gruesome accidents

to decent people.

Whereas the

nets approached

by birds and moths

and set by

Nabokovs in white

are lighter stuff

tied by threads

to branches

as though for sport.

. . .

A bird catches

like a shuttlecock.

In both events

what they get

only partly matches

what they sought

plus the problem

of the innocents.

One can admire

the common sense

it makes for sailors

who desire the

hardest, the most

backbreaking work,

the way you’re tired

and broken to dispatch

by the time it’s time

to justify the catch.

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