Skip to content →

Excerpts from a Secret Sermon

 

To speak of Distillation this instant

would be stupid and cause madness and loss of limb

to who may be fixing what needs six years to find rest.

 

Vine-tressed, the vessels are to store what of which ore taken

from ground or grave wherein lay a heavily gold-toothed guru

who told you in his will you will take out from him said gold

 

which becomes a new monkey to put up with.

It says not much but how to and when

you will be able to know.

 

First, strike spaces in casements not meant to screen

as all mannered pest fly through. You are

needful of these gaps which allow moonbeams of each degree

 

to touch you who is so unused; you must in sleep take visitings,

be pulled as towards their rut-rocked surface source.

You may go closer to the window. There is no glass in the frame.

 

It will be who wakes with a taste of special metal each morn.

Who was alive only when looking for the source.

Who was dying and, hard black-biled inside, had to hit back.

 

Neither slow to takeover nor quick breeding inside

this knowledge of instants uneasy as amputees

are to take away from their new ex-limbs.

 

And softly spoken as red worn by a sleeping babe;

dreams to him are livid though he is not allowed to say

what holds him to his ritual. He stains new if old clothes taken away.

 

And inches inside which tick each upended history to tell

who to hold this hand you have out to

catch motion off one moment you think meant for you.

from Moving DayFind more by Ish Klein at the library

Copyright © 2011 Ish Klein
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.

Published in Ish Klein Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.