Later than any time
can tell me, finding
ways now as I can—
any blame, anything
I shouldn’t do, any
thing forgotten, any way
to continue, this little
way, these smaller ways—
pride I had, what I thought
I could do, had done.
Anyone, anything, still
out there—is there some
one possible, something
not in mind still as
my mind, my way. I
persist only in wanting,
only in thinking, only now
in waiting, for that way
to be the way I can
still let go, still want, and
still let go, and want to.
4/5
Manila
Life goes on living,
sitting in chair here
in café at Domestic Airport—
heat stirring my skin & bones,
and people like dusty
old movie, Peter Lorre, and
I don’t see no criminals
looking at nobody, only
myriad people on this final
island of the ultimate world.
.
Each time sick loss
feeling starts to hit me,
think of more than that,
more than “I” thought of.
.
Early morning still—
“announcing the ah-ri-
val” of world in little,
soft, wet, sticky pieces.
.
You can tilt the world
by looking at it sideways—
or you can put it up-
side down by standing on
your head—and underneath,
or on end, or this way,
or that, the waves come in,
and grass grows.
.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
“Don’t take your love
“away from me—
“Don’t leave my heart
“in misery . . .”
I know that it’s
true. I know.
.
One day here
seems like years now
since plane came in
from Singapore—
heart in a bucket,
head in hand.
.
Falling to sleep nights
like losing balance—
crash!—wake to bright
sunlight, time to go!
Cebu
Cebu
Magellan was x’ed here
but not much now left,
seemingly, of that event
but for hotel’s name—
and fact of boats filling
the channel. And the churches,
of course, as Mexico, as all of
Central and South America.
Driving in from the airport,
hot, trying to get bearings—
witness easy seeming pace of the place,
banana trees, mangos, the high
vine grapes on their trellises.
But particularly the people moseying
along. Also the detention home
for boys, and another casual prison
beside the old airport now
used for light planes. I saw
in a recent paper a picture
of a triangular highrise in Chicago,
downtown, a new prison there,
looking like a modern hotel.
Also in Singapore there are
many, many new buildings—
crash housing for the poor,
that hurtles them skyward off
the only physical thing they
had left. Wild to see clotheslines,
flapping shirts, pants, dresses,
something like thirty stories up!
I’d choose, no doubt dumbly,
to keep my feet on the ground—
and I like these houses here,
open-sided, thatched roofed—
that could all be gone in a flash,
or molder more slowly
back into humus. One doesn’t
finally want it all forever,
not stopped there, in abstract
time. Whatever, it’s got to
be yielded, let go of, it can’t
live any longer than it has to.
Being human, at times I
get scared, of dying, growing
old, and think my body’s
possibly the exception to all
that I know has to happen.
It isn’t, and some of those
bananas are already rotten,
and no doubt there are vacant
falling-down houses, and boats
with holes in their bottoms
no one any longer cares about.
That’s all right, and I can
dig it, yield to it, let what
world I do have be the world.
In this room the air-conditioner
echoes the southwest of America—
my mother-in-law’s, in Albuquerque,
and I wonder what she’s doing
today, and if she’s happy there,
as I am here, with these green
walls, and the lights on, and
finally loving everything I know.
4/7
Morning
Dam’s broke,
head’s a
waterfall.
Davao
Davao Insular Hotel
You couldn’t get it
off here in a million
obvious years, shrubs cut
to make animals, bluish,
reddish, purple lights
illuminating the pool—
and the only lady within
miles to talk to tells me
she got culture-shocked by
multiple single-seat tv sets
in bus stations, airports, in
the States. So we’re single
persons, so the jungle’s
shrunk to woods, and
people are Jim and Mary—
have a drink. I can’t
believe the solution’s this
place either, three hundred
calculated persons to each
and every family unit,
sucking like mad to get fed.
Extended, distended—no
intent ever to be more or
less than the one sits next
to you, holds your hand,
and, on occasion, fucks.
4/8
Baler
Apocalypse Now
Waiting to see if
Manila’s a possi-
bility, yellow plane
of Francis F. Coppola
on tarmac fifty
yards away—kids,
coins, flipping, air
wet, rather warm—
no movies today,
friends—just sit
in air, on bench, be-
fore cantina, listen
to words of mouths
talking Tagalog,
and “I swear I
love my husband”—
I could spend quite
a bit of time here,
but by nine in
the morning, I hope
I can get home.
.
Wrong: white man’s
over-reach, teeth
eating tongue, spoken
beforehand, al-
ready.
4/10
Singapore
Evening
Walking street back here,
the main drag for the money,
and lights just going on,
day faded, people hot, distracted—
one person, walking, feeling older
now, heavier, from chest to hips
a lump won’t move wi
th my legs,
and all of it tireder, slower—
flashes in store windows, person
with somewhat silly hat on,
heavy-waisted, big, in the company,
and out of step, out of place—
back to the lone hotel room,
sit here now, writing this,
thinking of the next step,
and when and how to take it.
.
Split mind, hearing voice—
two worlds, two places.
4/11
Talking
Faded back last night
into older dreams, some
boyhood lost innocences.
The streets have become inaccessible
and when I think of people,
I am somehow not one of them.
Talking to the doctor-
novelist, he read me a poem
of a man’s horror, in Vietnam,
child and wife lost to him—
his own son sat across from me,
about eight, thin, intent—
and myself was like a huge,
fading balloon, that could hear
but not be heard, though we
talked and became clear friends.
I wanted to tell him I was
an honest, caring man. I wanted
the world to be more simple,
for all of us. His wife said,
driving back, that my hotel’s bar
was a swinging place in the ’50s.
It was a dark, fading night.
She spoke quickly, obliquely,
along for the ride, sitting
in the front seat beside him.
I could have disappeared, gone
away, seen them fading too,
war and peace, death,
life, still no one.
.
Why want
to be so one
when it’s not
enough?
.
Down and
down, over
and out.
4/13
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Old Saying
There is no
more.
.
Start again
from the beginning then.
4/14
Hotel Lobby
Sun out window’s
a blessing, air’s
warmth and wetness.
The people fade,
melt, in the mind.
.
No scale, no congruence,
enough.
.
This must be some
time-stream, persons
all the same.
.
How call back,
or speak forward?
Keep the physical
literal.
.
Play on it,
jump up.
.
I don’t
look like
anybody
here!
.
Funny how
people pick
their noses.
Riding with Sal
FOR SALLEH
Pounding VW motor
past the people, cars—
hot day in downtown
Kuala Lumpur, and the
Chinese-lunch-style
conversation’s still in mind,
“do Americans look down
on Asians?” Is the world
round, or flat, is it
one, or two, or many—
and what’s a Muslim
like you doing here
anyhow. Breeze lifts,
sun brightens at edges,
trees crouch under
towering hotel’s walls.
Go to Afghanistan and
be Sufis together, brother,
dance to that old in-
veterate wisdom after all.
.
Sufi Sam Christian
Lift me into heaven
slowly ’cause my back’s
sore and my mind’s too
thoughtful, and I’m not
even sure I want to go.
.
Lunch and After
I don’t want to leave
so quickly, the lovely
faces, surrounding, human
terms so attractive. And
the world, the world, we
could think of, here, to-
gether, a flash of instant, a
million years of time.
Don’t, myself, be an
old man yet, I want to
move out and into this
physical, endless place.
Sun’s dazzling shine now
back of the towering clouds,
and sounds of builders’
pounding, faint, distant
buzz of traffic. Mirror’s
in front of me, hat’s on
head, under it, human
face, my face, reddened,
it seems, lined, grey’s
in beard and mustache—
not only myself but an-
other man has got to
at last walk out and into
another existence, out there,
that haze that softens those trees,
all those other days to come.
.
War & Peace
Cannot want not to
want, cannot. Thinks
later, acts
now.
.
Hotel Merlin
On the seventeenth
floor of this
modern building, in
room I accepted
gratefully, bed I
lay down on—
vow to think
more responsibly?
Vow to be
kinder to
mother (dead), brothers
(dead), sister—
who loves me?
Will I now see
this world as
possible arrangement.
Will I eat
less, work more
for common ends?
Will I turn from friends,
who are not friends?
Will judgment,
measure
of such order,
rule me?
Or will flash of willful
impulse
still demand
whatever life,
whatever death.
.
Seventeenth Floor: Echoes of Singapore
No one’s going to
see me naked up here.
My only chance is
to jump.
4/15
Up Here
Place in mind
or literal, out window,
“too abstract”—
a long way down
to the street—
or home.
.
Time
Can’t live,
mindless,
in present—
can’t make past,
or future,
enough place.
4/16
Hong Kong
Remember
Sweltering, close
dreams of a
possible heaven—
before sleeping mind,
before waking
up to dead day.
.
Hong Kong Window
Seemingly awash
in this
place, here—
egocentric
abstraction—
no one
else but
me again,
and people,
people as if
behind glass,
close
but untouchable.
What
was the world
I’d thought of,
who
was to be there?
The buildings
lean in
/> this window,
hotel’s abstraction,
cars
like toys pass,
below,
fourteen stories
down
on those streets.
In park
kids wade
in a pool.
Grey day,
in spring,
waits for rain.
“What’s
the question?”
Who asks it,
which me
of what life.
.
Park
Like in the Brownie Books—
people below, in distance,
like little moving dots of color,
look at ’em go!
.
Buildings against hillsides
waiting for night
to make a move.
.
Something about the vertical
and the horizontal
out of whack possibly,
viz., the buildings
look like they could walk,
and in the flat park,
below, the people are
walking, and running even,
but I can’t put the two together.
.
Sign
“SIEMENS” not
semen’s, and I don’t
see men’s—and I don’t
know what it means.
.
Buildings
Why not make them
higher, and higher, and
higher—until they fall down?
.
Something about raw side
of cut cliff, with building
jammed against it, still hurts.
.
With world now
four billion, you
haven’t even started yet.
.
Sentimental
about earth
and water,
and people?
Still got enough
to share?
.
But if you don’t,
you won’t
have it long.
.
The money’s singing
in the walls of this building.
.
Sun’s out. Big
lazy clouds float
over the buildings.
Thank god.
.
Park
Why did that man
fly the kid’s kite
precisely into the trees
when a wide space
of bare ground was
a few feet away. Was it
the women, with them,
sitting on the park bench,
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 3
