The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

  What is it sees through, becomes

  reflection, empty signal of the past,

  a piece I kept in mind because

  I thought it had come true?

  I would have known you anywhere,

  brother, known we were going to meet

  wherever, in the street, this echo

  too. I would have known you.

  The Terribly Strange Bed

  I recall there being

  portraits on the wall

  with stiff, painted eyes

  rolled round in the dark

  on the wall across

  from my bed and the other

  in the room upstairs

  where we all slept

  as those eyes kept looking

  the persons behind

  about to kill me

  only in sleep safe.

  Stairway to Heaven

  Point of hill

  we’d come to, small

  rise there, the friends

  now separate, cars

  back of us by

  lane, the stones,

  Bowditch, etc., location,

  Tulip Path, hard

  to find on the

  shaft, that insistent

  rise to heaven

  goes down and down,

  with names like floors,

  ledges of these echoes,

  Charlotte, Sarah,

  Thomas, Annie

  and all, as with

  wave of hand I’d

  wanted them one

  way or other to

  come, go with them.

  Interior

  The room next to

  this one with the lowered

  lights, the kids watching

  television, dogs squatted

  on floor, and couch’s

  disarray, and all that

  comes of living anywhere

  before the next house, town,

  people get to know you if

  you let them, nowhere safe.

  Common

  Common’s profound bottom

  of flotsam, specious increase

  of the space, a ground abounds,

  a place to make it.

  Not Much

  Not much you ever

  said you were thinking

  of, not much to

  say in answer.

  Epic

  Wanting to tell

  a story,

  like hell’s simple invention, or

  some neat recovery

  of the state of grace,

  I can recall lace curtains,

  people I think I remember,

  Mrs. Curley’s face.

  The World

  The world so sweet its

  saccharine outshot by

  simple cold so colors

  all against the so-called

  starkness of the winter’s

  white and grey the

  clouds the ice the

  weather stables all in

  flat particular light

  each sunlit place so placed.

  After Pasternak

  Think that it’s all one?

  Snow’s thud, the car’s

  stuck door, the brilliant,

  patient sun—

  How many millions of years

  has it been coming

  to be here just this once—

  never returning—

  Oh dull edge of prospect—

  weary window on the past—

  whatever is here now

  cannot last.

  Tree

  FOR WARREN

  You tree

  of company—

  here

  shadowed branches,

  small,

  twisted comfortably

  your size,

  reddish buds’ clusters—

  all of

  you I love

  here

  by the simple river.

  Broad Bay

  Water’s a shimmer,

  banks green verge,

  trees’ standing shadowed,

  sun’s light slants,

  gulls settle white

  on far river’s length.

  All is in a windy echo,

  time again

  a far sense.

  Just in Time

  FOR ANNE

  Over the unwritten

  and under the written

  and under and over

  and in back and in front of

  or up or down or in

  or in place of, of not,

  of this and this, of

  all that is, of it.

  Nationalgalerie Berlin

  Nationalgalerie’s

  minute spasm’s

  self-reflective—

  art’s meager agony?

  Two hundred years

  zap past

  in moment’s

  echoing blast!

  No one apparently left

  to say “hello”—

  but for the genial

  late Romanticists.

  God, what a life!

  All you see is pain.

  I can’t go through that again

  —gotta go!

  .

  Trying to get image of man

  like trying on suit,

  too small, too loose,

  too late, too soon—

  Wrong fit. Wrong time.

  And you look out of

  your tired head,

  still stark naked,

  and you go to bed.

  .

  “Bellevue-Tower”

  could be Brooklyn,

  The roller skaters

  go round and around on the plaza,

  like “In Brueghel’s great picture, The Kermess . . .”

  Their rhythmic beauty

  is so human, so human.

  I watch and watch.

  .

  Kids now with skateboards.

  Edge of their chatter,

  boys, voices changing,

  lower, grow harsher.

  This is the life of man,

  the plans, the ways

  you have to do it.

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  .

  BY THE CANAL / SITTING

  The rippled, shelved

  surface of water,

  quiet canal, the chunky

  horse chestnut trees spread over

  reflected in edge of darker

  surface where else the light

  shows in endless small rows

  of slight, securing peace and quiet.

  Further off, on each side,

  cars, buses, trucks, bikes, and people.

  But man and boy

  pass back of me, spin of wheels,

  murmur of their voices.

  Life

  FOR BASIL

  Specific, intensive clarity,

  like nothing else

  is anything

  but itself—

  so echoes all,

  seen, felt, heard

  or tasted, the one

  and many. But

  my slammed fist

  on door, asking

  meager, repentant entry

  wants more.

  Dialing for Dollars

  CHOO CHOO

  My mother just on edge

  of unexpected death the

  fact of one operation over

  successful says, it’s all

  free, Bob! You don’t

  have to pay for any of it!

  Life, like. Waiting for the train.

  .

  LIKE MINE

  I’ll always love

  you no matter you

  get all that money

  and don’t need a

  helping hand like mine.

  .

  WAITING

  I’ve never had the

  habit of money but

  have at times wanted

  it, enough to give

  myself and friend
s an

  easy time over the

  hump but you can

  probably keep it, I’m

  just here breathing, brother,

  not exactly beside you.

  .

  THE WILLYS

  Little

  dollar

  bills.

  Picture

  The scale’s wrong. Kid’s

  leaned up against

  Dad’s huge leg, a

  tree trunk, unfeeling bark,

  rushing waters

  of piss? Must be it

  smells like toast,

  like granular egg

  or all night coffee

  on all alone. All

  so small,

  so far to go.

  Leaving

  Where to go

  if into blank wall

  and back of you

  you can’t get to—

  So night is black

  and day light,

  ground, water

  elemental.

  It all accumulates

  a place, something real

  in place.

  There it is—

  till it’s time to go,

  like they say,

  but the others

  want to stay, and will.

  Nature Morte

  It’s still

  life. It

  just ain’t moving.

  Fleurs

  Clumped Clares.

  Asphobellies.

  Blumenschein.

  The Company

  FOR THE SIGNET SOCIETY, APRIL 11, 1985

  Backward—as if retentive.

  “The child is father to the man”

  or some such echo of device,

  a parallel of use and circumstance.

  Scale become implication.

  Place, postcard determinant—

  only because someone sent it.

  Relations—best if convenient.

  “Out of all this emptiness

  something must come . . .” Concomitant

  with the insistent banality, small, still

  face in mirror looks simply vacant.

  Hence blather, disjunct, incessant

  indecision, moving along on

  road to next town where what waited

  was great expectations again, empty plate.

  So there they were, expectably ambivalent,

  given the Second World War

  “to one who has been long in city pent,”

  trying to make sense of it.

  We—morituri—blasted from classic

  humanistic noblesse oblige, all the garbage

  of either so-called side, hung on

  to what we thought we had, an existential

  raison d’être like a pea

  some faded princess tries to sleep on,

  and when that was expectably soon gone,

  we left. We walked away.

  Recorders ages hence will look for us

  not only in books, one hopes, nor only under rocks

  but in some common places of feeling,

  small enough—but isn’t the human

  just that echoing, resonant edge

  of what it knows it knows,

  takes heart in remembering

  only the good times, yet

  can’t forget whatever it was,

  comes here again, fearing this

  is the last day, this is the last,

  the last, the last.

  Two

  WINDOW

  Scales

  FOR BUDDY

  Such small dimension

  finally, the comfortable

  end of it, the people

  fading, world shrunk

  to some recollected

  edge of where it used to be,

  and all around a sound

  of coming, going, rustle

  of neighboring movement out there

  where as ever what one finally

  sees, hears, wants, waits

  still to recognize—is it

  the sun? Grass, ground,

  dog’s bark, bird, the

  opening, high clouds, fresh,

  lifting day—someone?

  Xmas

  I’m sure there’s a world I

  can get to by walking another

  block in the direction that

  was pointed out to me by any-

  one I was with and would even

  talk to me that late at

  night and with everything

  confused—I know—the

  kids tired, nerves stretched—

  and all, and this person, old

  man, Santa Claus! by

  god—the reindeer, the presents.

  Window

  THEN

  The window had

  been half

  opened and the

  door also

  opened, and the

  world then

  invited, waited,

  and one

  entered

  .

  X

  The world is

  many, the

  mind is

  one.

  .

  WHERE

  The window

  opened,

  beyond edge

  of white hall,

  light faint

  shifts from back

  a picture?

  slurlike “wing”?

  Who’s

  home?

  .

  The roof’s

  above, old

  reddish dulled

  tiles, small

  dormered windows, two

  chimneys, above

  the greyish,

  close sky.

  .

  Who’s there,

  old

  question, who’s

  here.

  .

  LIGHT

  Light’s on

  now

  in three

  sided balcony

  window mid-

  building, a floor

  up from street.

  Wait.

  Watch it.

  What light

  on drab earth,

  place on earth—

  Continue?

  Where to go so

  far away

  from here?

  Friends?

  Forgotten?

  Movement?

  A hand just

  flesh, fingers?

  White—

  Who threads fantastic tapestry

  just for me, for me?

  .

  WAITING

  One could sit

  minutes, hours,

  days, weeks,

  months, years—

  all of its

  rehearsal one

  after one, be done

  at last with it?

  .

  Or could go

  in

  to it, be

  inside

  head, look

  at day

  turn to dark,

  get rid

  of it at last, think

  out

  of patience, give

  it up?

  .

  Man

  with paper, white,

  in hand

  “tells the truth”

  silent, moves

  past the window

  away—

  sits down?

  Comes back,

  leans

  forward at waist,

  somewhat stiffly—

  not

  old,

  young, young.

  .

  He must love someone

  and this must be the story

  of how he wanted

  everything rightly done

  but without the provision

  planned, fell forward

  into it all,

  could not withstand

  the adamant simplicity

  of life’s “lifelike” r
eality—

  even in a mirror

  replaced by another—

  and couldn’t wait

  any longer,

  must have

  moved here.

  To “live a life” alone?

  to “come home”?

  To be “lost and found”

  again, “never more to roam”

  again. Or something more like

  “the fading light,” like

  they say, never quite

  come. Never just one.

  Place

  Your face

  in mind, slow love,

  slow growing, slow

  to learn enough.

  Patience to learn

  to be here, to savor

  whatever there is

  out there, without you

  here, here

  by myself.

  New World

  Edenic land, Adamic person—

  Foolishness is the price you’ll have to pay

  for such useless wisdom.

  Ho Ho

  FOR JOEL

  I have broken

  the small bounds

  of this existence and

  am travelling south

  on route 90. It

  is approximately

  midnight, surrogate

  earth time, and you

  who could, can, and

  will never take anything

  seriously will die

  as dumb as ever

  while I alone in

  state celestial shoot

  forward at designed rate,

  speed at last unimpeded.

  Three

  SEVEN

  Seven: A Suite for Robert Therrien

  STRAIGHT

  They were going up in

  a straight line right

  to God, once they died—

  The hills of home here

  are a yellow pointer, again

  God’s simplistic finger—

  Over the hill, the steeple

  still glows in the late light—

  all else whited out.

  .

  PLATE

  All I ever wanted was

  a place

  up there

  by myself.

  .

  “and the sky above—an old

  blue

  place” an

  old

  blue plate an old

  blue face

  .

  Very carefully I

  cut out an absolute

  circle of blue

  sky

  or water. They

  couldn’t tell

  the difference.

  .

  Blue plate

  special