The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

.

  RED

  When it goes

  that fast

  you don’t see anything

  but speed, you see

  red.

  .

  I got something stuck

  in my hand.

  It was a splinter.

  .

  In the first World War

  they had bombs

  that looked like this.

  .

  How fast

  do you think it’s going?

  .

  SNOWMAN

  Help the holes

  be bigger. Put

  your hand

  in.

  .

  He grew a

  point on

  top

  of his head—

  two

  of them.

  .

  That ice

  cream cone’ll

  drip?

  .

  Curious

  key hole.

  .

  I want to go into the immense

  blue yonder

  and I’ve built a negative number

  times three.

  .

  WINGS

  Those are hills out there

  or mounds

  Or breasts filling

  the horizon.

  .

  It’s a bird! Such

  grace.

  .

  Sitting here

  in Maine

  I put you on the window sill

  against the blue, white

  yellow sky. You’re a

  sea gull suddenly.

  What else

  do I want.

  .

  Miles away they

  are waiting for the promised

  land again and the wind

  has moved

  the sand

  into these shapes.

  .

  BOX

  What do you think

  he’s got it for

  unless

  he means to use it.

  .

  No way

  that could fit

  (me)

  .

  “The worms

  crawl in. The”

  .

  People walked

  through the town carrying

  coffins!

  .

  a coffin

  fit . . .

  Heh,

  heh.

  .

  Just stand him up

  in the corner.

  .

  BOAT

  Rock me, boat.

  Open, open.

  Hold me,

  little cupped hand.

  Let me come in,

  come on

  board you, sail

  off, sail off . . .

  H’s

  Have Hannah’s happy health—

  have whatever, be

  here, hombre . . . Her

  hands upon edge

  of table, her eyes

  as dark centers, her

  two teeth—but all,

  her climbing, sacklike,

  limp, her hands out-

  stretched, or simply out

  to it, her coming here,

  her, all of her, her

  words of her, Hannah,

  Hannie, Good girl,

  good. So we go

  on with it. So is

  Hannah

  in this world.

  After Frost

  FOR SHERMAN PAUL

  He comes here

  by whatever way he can,

  not too late,

  not too soon.

  He sits, waiting.

  He doesn’t know

  why he should

  have such a patience.

  He sits at a table

  on a chair.

  He is comfortable

  sitting there.

  No one else

  in this room,

  no others, no expectations,

  no sounds.

  Had he walked

  another way,

  would he be here,

  like they say.

  Black Grackle

  FOR STAN AND JANE

  Black grackle’s refreshing eyeblink

  at kitchen sink’s

  wedged window—

  a long way to go after all,

  a long way back to the crack

  in some specific wall

  let the light in, so

  to speak—Let the bird speak,

  squeak prettily, and sit

  on my finger, pecking ring’s blue

  stone. Home, home all around here,

  geese peer in, goats graze, I suppose

  they eat, want no

  arbitrary company nor summary

  investigation pretends in any way

  so to know them—and give milk.

  Youth has its own rewards,

  and miles to go before I sleep

  is echo of miles and miles,

  wherever, whatever it was—

  I wanted you and you

  sat down to stay awhile.

  If all there was was such

  one pulled the threads and all

  fell out, if going there was only

  coming here with times between

  and everyday a holiday with Mary

  and I love you still and always will,

  then then could not begin again

  its busyness, its casual consequences,

  and no head on no shoulders, no

  eyes or ears, etc., nothing forward

  in this peculiarly precious instance

  scrunched down here, screaming—ultimate me—

  for miles and miles around

  its devastating sound.

  The Seasons

  FOR JASPER JOHNS

  “Therefore all seasons will be sweet to thee . . .”

  –S. T. COLERIDGE, “FROST AT MIDNIGHT”

  Was it thunk suck

  of sound an insistent

  outside into the patience

  abstract waited was lost

  in such simple flesh où

  sont les mother and

  father so tall the green

  hills echoéd and light

  was longer, longer, into

  the sun, all the small

  body bent at last to

  double back into one

  and one and one wonder,

  paramour pleasure.

  .

  High air’s lightness heat

  haze grasshopper’s chirr

  sun’s up hum two close

  wet sweat time’s hung in space

  dust deep greens a wave of grasses

  smells grow faint sounds echo

  the hill again up and down

  we go—

  summer, summer, and not even

  the full of it . . .

  Echoes again body’s time a

  ticking a faint insistent

  intimate skin wants weather

  to reassure.

  .

  All grown large world

  round ripeness is all

  an orange pumpkin harsh

  edge now of frost an

  autumnal moon over the

  far off field leads back

  to the house all’s dead

  silence the peculiarly

  constructed one you were

  all by yourself Shine on

  Hear the walls of fall

  The dark flutes of autumn

  sound softly . . . Oh love,

  love, remember me.

  .

  As if because or

  whenever it was it was

  there again muffled mute

  an extraordinary quiet

  white and cold far off

  hung in the air without

  apparent edge or end

  nowhere one was or if

  then gone waited

  come full circle again

  deep and t
hick and even

  again and again

  having thought to go nowhere

  had got there.

  .

  The seasons, tallies of earth,

  keep count of time,

  say what it’s worth.

  Sight

  Eye’s reach out window water’s

  lateral quiet bulk of trees at

  far edge now if peace were

  possible here it would enter.

  .

  Bulk of trees’ tops mass of

  substantial trunks supporting from

  shifting green base lawn variable

  greens and almost yellow looks like.

  .

  Seven grey metal canoes drawn

  up and tethered by pond’s long

  side with brushy green bushes and

  metallic light sheen of water at evening.

  .

  What see what look for what

  seems to be there front of the fore-

  head the echoing painful minded-

  ness of life will not see this here.

  Four

  DREAMS

  Dreams

  What you think you

  eat at some table like

  a pig with people

  you don’t even

  know and lady there

  feeds you all and you,

  finally you at least

  are full, say, look at

  them still eating! Why

  (says a woman, another

  sitting next to me) those

  others still eating you

  so cannily observed are

  unlike you who could be fed

  because you were hungry! But

  them, they can’t—they

  are possessed by the

  idea of hunger, never enough

  to eat for them, agh . . .

  Or you either, dreamer,

  who tells this simple

  story being all these

  same offensive persons

  in one empty head.

  .

  In dreams begin the

  particulars of those

  echoes and edges,

  the quaint ledges of

  specific childhood nailed

  to my knees and

  leaning in unison

  while the other

  men went off, the

  women working, the

  kids at baleful

  play, mud-colored

  with rocks and stones and

  trees years ago in

  Albuquerque, New Mexico we’d

  stopped the night I dreamt

  I was to be child forever

  on way to get the kids from camp.

  .

  Have you ever

  had vision as if

  you were walking

  forward to some

  edge of water through

  the trees, some country

  sunlit lane, some

  place was just ahead

  and opening as your body

  elsewise came

  and you had

  been in two places?

  For the World That Exists

  No safer place to live than with children

  for the world that exists.

  If

  Up the edge of the window out to

  tree’s overhanging branches sky

  light on facing building up to

  faint wash blue up on feet ache

  now old toes wornout joints make

  the wings of an angel so I’d fly.

  Lights

  I could get

  all of it.

  I could say

  anything.

  I wish I could

  just get even.

  I’m here.

  I’m still here.

  When did

  it happen.

  Where was

  everyone.

  I wish I could

  just get even.

  Now you’ve

  gone away.

  Nobody

  wants to stay.

  Here I am.

  Here I am.

  I Dreamt

  I dreamt I dwelt in a big building—

  four walls, floor and a ceiling,

  bars in front and behind.

  Nothing on my mind.

  I dreamt I dwelt in a can,

  round, tin, sides, top and bottom,

  and I couldn’t get out.

  Nobody to get me out.

  I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,

  a men’s room with a trough

  you pissed in, and there I was.

  There were a lot of us.

  I dreamt I dwelt in a house,

  a home, a heap of living

  people, dogs, cats, flowers.

  It went on for hours.

  Whatever you dream is true.

  It’s just you making it up,

  having nothing better to do.

  Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.

  Sparks Street Echo

  Flakes falling

  out window make

  no place, no place—

  no faces, traces,

  wastes of whatever

  wanted to be—

  was here

  momently, mother,

  was here.

  You

  You were leaving, going

  out the door in

  preoccupation as to

  what purpose it

  had served, what

  the point was, even

  who or what or where,

  when you thought you

  could, suddenly, say

  you understood, and

  saw all people as if

  at some distance, a

  pathetic, vast huddle

  up against a fence.

  You were by no means

  the Cosmic Farmer

  nor Great Eyeball in Sky.

  You were tired, old now,

  confused as to purpose,

  even finally alone.

  You walked slowly

  away or rather got in

  the car was waiting

  with the others.

  How to say clearly what

  we think so matters

  is bullshit, how all the

  seeming difference is none?

  Would they listen, presuming

  such a they? Is any-

  one ever home to such in-

  sistences? How ring

  the communal bell?

  All was seen in

  a common mirror, all

  was simple self-

  reflection. It was me

  and I was you.

  Focus

  Patches of grey

  sky tree’s

  lines window

  frames the

  plant hangs

  in middle.

  Plague

  When the world has become a pestilence,

  a sullen, inexplicable contagion,

  when men, women, children

  die in no sense realized, in

  no time for anything, a

  painful rush inward, isolate—

  as when in my childhood the

  lonely leper pariahs so seemingly

  distant were just down the street,

  back of drawn shades, closed doors—

  no one talked to them, no one

  held them anymore, no one waited

  for the next thing to happen—as

  we think now the day begins

  again, as we look for the faint sun,

  as they are still there, we hope, and we are coming.

  Age

  Most explicit—

  the sense of trap

  as a narrowing

  cone one’s got

  stuck into and

  any movement

  forward simply

  wedges one more—

  but where

  or quite when,

  even w
ith whom,

  since now there is no one

  quite with you— Quite? Quiet?

  English expression: Quait?

  Language of singular

  impedance? A dance? An

  involuntary gesture to

  others not there? What’s

  wrong here? How

  reach out to the

  other side all

  others live on as

  now you see the

  two doctors, behind

  you, in mind’s eye,

  probe into your anus,

  or ass, or bottom,

  behind you, the roto-

  rooter-like device

  sees all up, concludes

  “like a worn out inner tube,”

  “old,” prose prolapsed, person’s

  problems won’t do, must

  cut into, cut out . . .

  The world is a round but

  diminishing ball, a spherical

  ice cube, a dusty

  joke, a fading,

  faint echo of its

  former self but remembers,

  sometimes, its past, sees

  friends, places, reflections,

  talks to itself in a fond,

  judgmental murmur,

  alone at last.

  I stood so close

  to you I could have

  reached out and

  touched you just

  as you turned

  over and began to

  snore not unattractively,

  no, never less than

  attractively, my love,

  my love—but in this

  curiously glowing dark, this

  finite emptiness, you, you, you

  are crucial, hear the

  whimpering back of

  the talk, the approaching

  fears when I may

  cease to be me, all

  lost or rather lumped

  here in a retrograded,

  dislocating, imploding

  self, a uselessness

  talks, even if finally to no one,

  talks and talks.

  Funny

  Why isn’t it funny when you die,

  at least lapse back into archaic pattern,

  not the peculiar holding on to container

  all other worlds were thought to be in—

  archaic, curious ghost story then,

  all sitting in the familiar circle,

  the light fading out at the edges,

  and voices one thinks are calling.

  You watch them go first, one by one,

  you hold on to the small, familiar places,

  you love intently, wistfully, now

  all that you’ve been given.

  But you can’t be done with it

  and you’re by no means alone.

  You’re waiting, watching them go,

  know there’s an end to it.

  Five

  EIGHT PLUS

  Improvisations

  FOR LISE HOSHOUR