Runes Author:Robert Kelly Poetry. "When I was a child, the language we spoke pronounced ruins identically with runes. The primal scratchmarks of our earliest language, the rubble and fragments left after all our building--somehow these were the same. In this book are some primal gestures and some weary wreckage, and through the grace of language I can't tell them ap... more »art. And if you can, don't tell me yet. I'm nearsighted, they're fresh and red, they all look like poppies to me"--Robert Kelly. "This is how salt began// and memory, and arithmetic,/ then music.// Later mercury/ and the soft answer// every lilac offers/ to the saddest question."« less