Binding by Striking - Robert Kelly

Say I come to you by circles. Say the line
that carries my name keeps me
from knowing you as a car knows a garage.
Say I am a wine you know better than to drink.
Say I, seeing the pale skin inside your upper arms,
become a better animal and become water.
Say this water doesn't pull but when you fall
takes you altogether in. Say you are in.

Say we sit on some steps together, or a wall.
Say something falls. I come to you then confused by lime,
sand, long hair holding the mortar together.
Say we stand a long time and one of us falls and one
catches, one catches and one lets go and it's night already.
We are still together. Say I am oily and you're dry.
Say a straight path and a twisted gate. Say something
not easy to say. Say the self-renewing knot of flesh
they call the rose blocks at times the future prong.
Say we belong to each other. Say the same thing
that holds us holds us apart. Say we struggle
to get in and stay in and not ever leave. Say for a change
you are out and I am in and I have trees too
your path gets lost in. Say you have numbers I can count
and numbers that leave me out. Say we change
but say we are always being held to the same.

Not to say little of same. Not to say one is more than some
or some less worth than every. Not to say every.
Not to say your pale skin is paler than this or this wall higher.
We rise where we fall. Not to say the word that draws us
doesnt some way let us in. Not to say in is the only.
We are held where we call. We know something and are held
to what we know. We fall through the wall. Not to say
there is only one garden or one car. Not to say one
when we mean "a road" and not to say going when we mean "home."
Not to say time when we mean space. Not to say stone
when a wind blows through the place where we've fallen.

Say you come to me by line. Say the circle you understand
has more light than a bone and more air than a tower. Say
the broad leaf of burdock plays two pieces of music:
bug-holes and leaf-shadow. Say a skin is like that and that
what we have consumed gives us light and what is gone
is the constellation that guides us. Say you have come
and will come. Say the language is dry and the wall is low.
Say a word gets over the wall. Say we are in. Say my skin
draws you. Say what we do with each other goes on.

Say a voice that you hear. Say that we know ourselves
chiefly in many. The Oil of Others is the light-giving flame.
Say we are the same. Say we come to it simply again.