The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

  sits in a lousy tree,

  and sings and sings

  all goddamn day,

  and what I do

  is write it down,

  in words

  they call them:

  him, and it, and her,

  some story this

  will sometimes tell

  or not. The bird

  can’t care, the

  tree can hardly hold it up—

  and me is least of all

  its worry. What then

  is this life all about.

  Simple. It’s garbage

  dumped in street,

  a friend’s quick care,

  someone who hates you

  and won’t go way,

  a breeze

  blowing past Neil’s

  malfunctioning dear ears,

  a blown-out dusty room,

  an empty echoing kitchen,

  a physical heart

  which goes or stops.

  For you—

  because you carry wit with you,

  and you are there somehow

  at the hard real times,

  and you know them too—

  a necessary love.

  The Place

  . . . Swoop of hawk—

  or mind’s adjustment

  to sight—memory?

  Air unrelieved, unlived?

  Begun again, begin

  again the play

  of cloud, the lift

  of sudden cliff,

  the place in place—

  the way it was again.

  Go back a day,

  take everything, take time

  and play it back

  again, the staggering

  path, ridiculous, uncertain

  bird, blurred, fuzzy

  fog—or rocks which

  seem to hang in

  imperceptible substance

  there, or here,

  in thought? This thinking

  is a place itself

  unthought, which comes

  to be the world.

  Learning

  “Suggestion/recognition . . .”

  The horse

  at the edge of the pool,

  or the horse’s ass,

  the fool,

  either end, sits

  waiting for world

  to resolve it—

  Or in swirl

  of these apparent facts,

  contexts, states,

  of possible being,

  among all others,

  of numbered time,

  one or two

  gleam clearly

  there, now here—

  in mind.

  Corn Close

  FOR BASIL BUNTING

  Words again, rehearsal—

  “Are we going

  to get up into

  heaven—after all?”

  What’s

  the sound of that,

  who, where—

  and how.

  One wonder,

  one wonders, sees

  the world—

  specifically, this one.

  Sheep, many

  with lambs,

  of a spring morning,

  on sharp slope of hill’s side,

  run up it

  in chill rain.

  Below’s brook,

  as I’d say,

  a burn? a beck?

  Goddamnit, learn it.

  Fell fills eye,

  as we lie abed.

  Basil’s up and out

  walking

  with the weather’s

  vagaries. His home is

  this world’s

  wetness

  or any’s, feet

  planted on ground,

  and but

  for trash can takes

  weekly hauling

  up and down,

  no seeming fact

  of age presently

  bothers him.

  Vague palaver.

  Can I get the fire

  to burn with wet wood?

  Am I useful

  today? Will I fuck up

  the fireplace?

  Drop

  log

  on my foot.

  At breakfast we sit,

  provided, tea’s steam,

  hot scones, butter,

  marmalade—Basil’s

  incurious, reassuring

  smile—and stories

  of Queen E’s

  garden party, the thousands

  jammed into garden—

  style

  of a damned poor

  sort . . . Consider

  (at night) Corelli

  gives lifetime

  to getting it right:

  the Twelve Concerti Grossi,

  not Ives

  (whom I love),

  not makeshift,

  tonal blather—

  but sound meets sound

  with clear edge,

  finds place,

  precise, in the mind.

  Have you seen a hawk—

  look out! It

  will get you,

  blurred,

  patient person,

  drinking, eating,

  sans body, sans

  history, in-

  telligence, etc.

  Oh, I think

  the words come from

  the world and go

  “I know

  not

  where . . .”

  Their breasts banging—

  flap—on their breastbones

  makes the dear sound—

  like tire tread

  pulled from the shoe—

  flap flap, bangs the body,

  chortles, gurgles,

  wheezes, breathes,

  “Camptown race is (?)

  five miles long!”

  Back on the track,

  you asshole.

  No excuses,

  no

  “other things to do”—

  And Wyatt’s

  flight through the night

  is an honest

  apprehension:

  They flee

  from me

  that sometime did me seek . . .

  When we’d first come,

  our thought

  was to help him,

  old friend, and brought

  such scanty makeshift

  provision, in retrospect

  I blush—as who

  would give to Northumbrian

  Teacher’s

  as against Glenfiddich—

  which he had.

  Was I scared

  old friend

  would be broken

  by world

  all his life

  had lived in,

  or that art,

  his luck,

  had gone sour?

  My fear

  is my own.

  He got

  the car started

  after I tried

  and tried, felt

  battery fading,

  mist-sodden spark plugs—

  despair!

  He had a wee can

  in his hand,

  and he sprayed

  minute part

  of its contents—

  phfft!—on car’s motor,

  and car starts,

  by god. What wonder

  more than

  to be where you are,

  and to know it?

  All’s here.

  The Children

  AFTER PATRICK KAVANAGH

  Down on the sidewalk recurrent

  children’s forms, reds, greens,

  walking along with the watching

  elders not their own.

  It’s winter, grows colder and colder.

  How to play today without sun?

  Will summer, gone, come again?

  Will I only grow older and older?

  Not wise enough yet to know

  you’re only here at
all

  as the wind blows, now

  as the fire burns low.

  Three

  Desultory Days

  FOR PETER WARSHALL

  Desultory days,

  time’s wandering

  impermanences—

  like, what’s for lunch,

  Mabel? Hunks

  of unwilling

  meat got chopped

  from recalcitrant

  beasts? “No tears

  for this vision”—

  nor huge strawberries

  zapped from forlorn Texas,

  too soon, too soon . . .

  We will meet again

  one day, we will

  gather at the river

  (Paterson perchance)

  so turgidly oozes by,

  etc. Nothing new in the world

  but us, the human

  parasite eats up

  that self-defined reality

  we talked about in

  ages past. Now prophecy declares,

  got to get on with it,

  back to the farm, else die

  in streets inhuman

  ’spite we made them every one.

  Ah friends, before I die,

  I want to sit awhile

  upon this old world’s knee,

  yon charming hill, you see,

  and dig the ambient breezes,

  make of life

  such gentle passing pleasure!

  Were it then wrong

  to avoid, as might be said,

  the heaped-up canyons of the dead—

  L.A.’s drear smut, and N.Y.C.’s

  crunched millions? I don’t know.

  It seems to me

  what can salvation be

  for less than 1%

  of so-called population

  is somehow latent fascism

  of the soul. What leaves behind

  those other people,

  like they say,

  reneges on Walter Whitman’s

  19th century Mr. Goodheart’s

  Lazy Days and Ways In Which

  we might still save the world.

  I loved it but

  I never could believe it—

  rather, the existential

  terror of New England

  countrywoman, Ms.

  Dickinson: “The Brain, within its Groove

  Runs evenly—and true—

  But let a Splinter swerve—

  “’Twere easier for You—//

  To put a Current back—

  When Floods have slit the Hills—

  “And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—

  And Trodden out the Mills—”

  moves me. My mind

  to me a nightmare is—

  that thought of days,

  years, went its apparent way

  without itself, with

  no other company than thought.

  So—born to die—why

  take everything with us?

  Why the meagerness

  of life deliberately,

  why the patience

  when of no use,

  and the anger, when it is?

  I am no longer

  one man—

  but an old one

  who is human again

  after a long time,

  feels the meat contract,

  or stretch, upon bones,

  hates to be alone

  but can’t stand interruption.

  Funny

  how it all works out,

  and Asia is

  after all how much money

  it costs—

  either to buy or to sell it.

  Didn’t they have a

  world too? But then

  they don’t look like us,

  do they? But they’ll get us,

  someone will—they’ll find us,

  they won’t leave us here

  just to die

  by ourselves

  all alone?

  Arroyo

  Out the window,

  across the ground there,

  persons walk

  in the hard sun—

  Like years ago we’d watch

  the children go to school

  in the vacant building now

  across the arroyo.

  Same persons,

  Mr. Gutierrez and,

  presumably, his son,

  Victor, back from the army—

  Would wave to me

  if I did to them,

  call que tal, hello,

  across the arroyo.

  How sentimental,

  heartfelt, this life becomes

  when you try to think of it,

  say it in simple words—

  How far in time and space

  the distance,

  the simple division of a ditch,

  between people.

  For John Duff

  “I placed a jar in Tennessee . . .”

  —WALLACE STEVENS, “ANECDOTE OF THE JAR”

  Blast of harsh

  flat sunlight

  on recalcitrant ground

  after rain. Ok.

  Life in N.M. is

  not a tourist’s paradise,

  not the solar

  energy capital

  of the world, not

  your place in the sun. If

  I had my way,

  I’d be no doubt

  long gone. But

  here I am and we talk

  of plastic America,

  of other friends

  other places. What

  will we do

  today. When

  will heart’s peace

  descend in rippling, convenient

  waves. Why

  is the sky still

  so high.

  What’s

  underfoot.

  I don’t

  feel comfortable with Indians—

  and the Mexican

  neighbors with

  seventeen kids—

  what time exists

  now still to

  include them.

  Ok. A day

  goes by. Night

  follows. On the slight

  lip of earth

  down from the gate

  at the edge of

  the arroyo

  sits

  a menhir—

  remember

  that oar

  you could screw into

  ground, say,

  here I’ll build a city?

  No way.

  This column

  is common

  old stretcher

  cement blocks.

  Put one on one

  in pairs, first this way,

  then that, you get

  a house,

  explicit, of the mind,

  both thought

  and the senses provoke it—

  you see it—

  you feel and think

  this world.

  It’s a quiet

  grey column,

  handsome—“the one

  missing color”—

  and it’s here now

  forever,

  no matter

  it falls in a day.

  Ok, John.

  When you’re gone,

  I’ll remember

  also forever

  the tough dear

  sentiment, the clarity,

  of your talking, the care.

  And this it

  you gave us:

  here

  is all the wonder,

  there

  is all there is.

  Talk

  One thing, strikes in,

  recall, anyone talking

  got to be to human

  or something, like a rock,

  a “song,” a thing to

  talk to, to talk to.

  Poor

  Nothing’s

  today and

  tomorrow only.

&
nbsp; .

  Slow-

  er.

  .

  Place-

  ss.

  .

  POOR

  Pur-

  pose por-

  puss.

  .

  Sore hand.

  .

  Got

  to get going.

  .

  And I was

  not asleep

  and I was

  not alone.

  Touchstone

  FOR L. Z.

  “Something

  by which

  all else

  can be measured.”

  Something

  by which

  to measure

  all else.

  Morning (8:10 AM)

  In sun’s

  slow rising

  this morning

  antenna tower

  catches

  the first light,

  shines

  for an instant

  silver

  white,

  separate

  from the houses,

  the trees,

  old woman walking

  on street out front.

  Eye o’ the Storm

  Weather’s a funny

  factor, like once

  day breaks, storm’s

  lifted, or come,

  faces, eyes,

  like clouds drift

  over this world,

  are all there is

  of whatever there is.

  On a Theme by Lawrence, Hearing Purcell

  Knowing what

  knowing is,

  think less

  of your life as labor.

  Pain’s increase,

  thought’s random torture,

  grow with intent.

  Simply live.

  This Day

  This day after

  Thanksgiving the edge

  of winter

  comes closer.

  This grey, dulled

  morning the sky

  closes down on

  the horizon to make

  one wonder

  if a life lives more

  than just looking,

  knowing nothing more.

  Yet such a gentle

  light, faded,

  domestic,

  impermanent—

  one will not

  go farther than home

  to see this world

  so quietly, greyly, shrunken.

  The Last Mile

  FOR JACK CLARKE

  What’s to be said

  of friend dead—

  eight years later?

  Should he have waited

  for whatever

  here comes together

  to make a use

  for these friends and fools

  must need excuse

  for testament, for

  interpretation,

  for their own investment?

  You know the world

  is one big blow—

  that’s all.

  I’m here as well, now

  unable to say

  what it is or was,

  he said, more than to stay

  in the body

  all the way

  to the grave, as it happens,