The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley
Page 2
Friend Says of Job
FOR BARRY SOUTHAM
You get to see all kinds of life
like man chasing wife
in the driveway
with their car.
Mutual property!
They want to sell their house?
.
Elsewise absences,
eyes a grey blue,
tawny Austrian
hair—the voice,
speaking, there.
.
Hermione, in the garden,
“weeping at grief?”
Stone-statued single woman—
eyes alive.
.
Milton über Alles
When I consider
how my life is spent
ere half my years
on this vast blast
are o’er . . .
.
Reasoned recognitions—
feelings fine.
.
Welcome
to the world,
it’s still
pretty much the same.
That kiwi
on yon roof
is a symbol,
but the ocean
don’t change.
It’s all round!
Don’t
let them kid you.
3/11
Palmerston North
Soup
I know what you’d say
if I could ask you—
but I’m tired of it—
no word, nothing again.
Letter from guy says,
“she looks well,
happy, working hard—”
Forget it.
I’m not there.
I’m really here,
sitting,
with my hat on.
It’s a great day
in New Zealand
more or less.
I’m not alone in this.
Lady out window hangs clothes,
reds and blues—
basket, small kid,
clothespins in mouth.
Do I want to fuck,
or eat?
No problem.
There’s a telephone.
I know what you mean,
now “down under” here,
that each life’s
got its own condition
to find,
to get on with.
I suppose it’s
letting go, finally,
that spooks me.
And of course my arms
are full as usual.
I’m the only one I know.
May I let this be
West Acton, and
myself six? No,
I don’t travel that way
despite memories,
all the dear or awful
passages apparently
I’ve gone through.
Back to the weather,
and dripping nose
I truly wanted to forget here,
but haven’t—
ok, old buddy,
no projections, no regrets.
You’ve been a dear friend
to me in my time.
If it’s New Zealand
where it ends,
that makes a weird sense
too. I’d never have guessed it.
Say that all the ways
are one—consumatum est—
like some soup
I’d love to eat with you.
3/16
This wide, shallow bowl,
the sun, earth here
moving easy, slow
in the fall, the air
with its lightness, the
underchill now—flat, far out,
to the mountains and the forest.
Come home to its song?
.
Sitting at table—
good talk
with good people.
.
River’s glint, wandering
path of it.
Old trees grown tall,
maintain,
look down on it all.
.
Bye-bye, kid says,
girl, about five—
peering look,
digs my one eye.
.
Sun again, on table,
smoke shaft of cigarette,
ticking watch,
chirr of cicadas—
all world, all mind, all heart.
3/17
Wellington
Here again,
shifting days,
on the street.
The people of my life
faded,
last night’s dreams,
echoes now.
The vivid sky, blue,
sitting here in the sun—
could I let it go?
Useless question?
Getting old?
.
I want to be a dog,
when I die—
a dog, a dog.
.
Bruce & Linley’s House
Fire back of grate
in charming stove
sits in the chimney hole,
cherry red—
but orange too.
.
Mrs. Manhire saw me
on plane to Dunedin,
but was too shy to speak
in her lovely Scots accent.
We meet later,
and she notes the sounds are
not very sweet
in sad old Glasgow.
But my wee toughness,
likewise particularity,
nonetheless come
by blood from that city.
.
Love
Will you be dust,
reading this?
Will you be sad
when I’m gone.
3/19
Sit Down
Behind things
or in front of them,
always a goddamn
adamant number stands
up and shouts,
I’m here, I’m here!
— Sit down.
.
Mother and son
get up,
sit down.
.
Night
Born and bred
in Wellington
she said—
Light high,
street black,
singing still,
“Born & bred
in Wellington,
she said—”
.
Doggie Bags
Don’t take
the steak
I ain’t
Dunedin
.
The dishes
to the sink
if you’ve
Dunedin
.
Nowhere
else to go
no I’m not
Dunedin
.
Ever if
again home
no roam
(at the inn)
Dunedin
.
Maybe
Maybe
this way again
someday—
thinking, last night,
of Tim Hardin, girl singing,
“Let me be your rainy day man . . .”
What’s the time, dear.
What’s happening.
.
Stay
in Dunedin
for
forever
and a day.
.
Thinking light,
whitish blue,
sun’s
shadow on
the porch
floor.
.
Why, in Wellington,
all the “Dunedin”—
Why here
there.
3/21
Hamilton
Hamilton Hotel
Magnolia tree out window
here in Hamilt
on—
years and years ago
the house, in France,
called Pavillion des Magnolias,
where we lived and Charlotte
was born, and time’s gone
so fast—.
.
Singing undersounds,
birds, cicadas—
overcast grey day.
Lady far off across river,
sitting on bench there,
crossed legs, alone.
.
If the world’s one’s
own experience of it,
then why walk around
in it, or think of it.
More would be more
than one could know
alone, more than myself’s
small senses, of it.
3/22
Auckland
So There
FOR PENELOPE
Da. Da. Da da.
Where is the song.
What’s wrong
with life
ever. More?
Or less—
days, nights,
these
days. What’s gone
is gone forever
every time, old friend’s
voice here. I want
to stay, somehow,
if I could—
if I would? Where else
to go.
The sea here’s out
the window, old
switcher’s house, vertical,
railroad blues, lonesome
whistle, etc. Can you
think of Yee’s Cafe
in Needles, California
opposite the train
station—can you keep
it ever
together, old buddy, talking
to yourself again?
Meantime some yuk
in Hamilton has blown
the whistle on a charming
evening I wanted
to remember otherwise—
the river there, that
afternoon, sitting,
friends, wine & chicken,
watching the world go by.
Happiness, happiness—
so simple. What’s
that anger is that
competition—sad!—
when this at least
is free,
to put it mildly.
My aunt Bernice
in Nokomis,
Florida’s last act,
a poem for Geo. Washington’s
birthday. Do you want
to say “it’s bad”?
In America, old sport,
we shoot first, talk later,
or just take you out to dinner.
No worries, or not
at the moment,
sitting here eating bread,
cheese, butter, white wine—
like Bolinas, “Whale Town,”
my home, like they say,
in America. It’s one world,
it can’t be another.
So the beauty,
beside me, rises,
looks now out window—
and breath keeps on breathing,
heart’s pulled in
a sudden deep, sad
longing, to want
to stay—be another
person some day,
when I grow up.
The world’s somehow
forever that way
and its lovely, roily,
shifting shores, sounding now,
in my ears. My ears?
Well, what’s on my head
as two skin appendages,
comes with the package.
I don’t want to
argue the point.
Tomorrow
it changes, gone,
abstract, new places—
moving on. Is this
some old-time weird
Odysseus trip
sans paddle—up
the endless creek?
Thinking of you,
baby, thinking
of all the things
I’d like to say and do.
Old-fashioned time
it takes to be
anywhere, at all.
Moving on. Mr. Ocean,
Mr. Sky’s
got the biggest blue eyes
in creation—
here comes the sun!
While we can,
let’s do it, let’s
have fun.
3/26
Sidney, Australia
Now
Hard to believe
it’s all me
whatever
this world
of space & time,
this place,
body,
white,
inutile,
fumbling at the mirror.
3/27
Yah
Sure I fell in love—
“with a very lovely person.”
You’d love her too.
“She’s lovely.”
.
Funny what your head
does, waking up
in room, world,
you never saw before,
each night new.
Beautiful view, like they say,
this time, Sydney—
who’s always been a friend of mine.
Boats out there, dig it?
Trees so green you could
eat them, grass too.
People, by god—
“so you finally got here?”
Yeah, passing through.
.
One person
and a dog.
.
Woman staggering
center of street—
wop!
Messy.
All in
the mind.
.
Long
legged
dark
man
I think.
.
Hey Cheryl!
Talk
to me.
Yiss?
Say it like this.
.
I love
Australia—
it’s so big
and fuzzy
in bed.
.
Then
Don’t go
to the mountains,
again—not
away, mad. Let’s
talk it out, you
never went anywhere.
I did—and here
in the world, looking back
on so-called life
with its impeccable
talk and legs and breasts,
I loved you
but not as some
gross habit, please.
Your voice
so quiet now,
so vacant, for me,
no sound, on the phone,
no clothes, on the floor,
no face, no hands,
—if I didn’t want
to be here, I wouldn’t
be here, and would
be elsewhere? Then.
3/28
Window
Aching sense
of being
person—body in-
side, out—
the houses, sky,
the colors, sounds.
3/29
Places
All but
for me and Paul.
.
Off
of.
3/30
En Route Perth
For Cheryl
Sitting here in limbo, “there are
sixteen different shades of red.”
Sitting here in limbo, there are
people walking through my head.
If I thought I’d think it different,
I’d just be dumber than I said.
.
Hearing sounds in
plane’s landing gear lowering:
I don’ wanna
&nbs
p; 3/31
Singapore
Men
Here, on the wall
of this hotel in
Singapore, there’s a
picture, of a woman,
big-breasted, walking,
blue-coated, with
smaller person—both
followed by a house men
are carrying. It’s a day
in the life of the world.
It tells you, somehow,
what you ought to know.
.
Getting fainter, in the world,
fearing something’s fading,
deadened, tentative responses—
go hours without eating,
scared without someone to be
with me. These empty days.
.
Growth, trees, out window’s
reminiscent of other days,
other places, years ago,
a kid in Burma, war,
fascinated, in jungle,
happily not shot at,
hauling the dead and dying
along those impossible roads
to nothing much could help.
Dreaming, of home, the girl
left behind, getting drunk,
getting laid, getting beaten
out of whorehouse one night.
So where am I now.
.
Patience gets
you the next place.
So they say.
.
Some huge clock
somewhere said it was
something like sixteen
or twenty hours later
or earlier there, going
around and around.
.
Blue Rabbit
Things going quiet
got other things
in mind. That rabbit’s
scared of me! I can’t
drag it out by the ears
again just to look.
.
I’ll remember the dog,
with the varicolored,
painted head, sat
beside me, in Perth,
while I was talking
to the people
in the classroom—
and seemed to listen.
4/4
Manila, the Philippines
Country Western
Faint dusky light
at sunset—park,
Manila—people
flooding the flatness,
speakers, music:
“Yet I did
“the best I could
“with what I had . . .”
.
Here Again
No sadness
in the many—
only the one,
separate, looks
to see another
come. So it’s
all by myself
again, one
way or another.
.
Later