YOU BET
Birds like
windows.
.
YONDER
Heaven’s up
there still.
.
THE KIDS
Little
muffins
in a
pan.
.
THE CART
Oh well, it
thinks.
.
NEGATIVE
There’s a big
hole.
.
SITE
Slats in
sunlight a
shadow.
.
PURITAN
Plant’s in
place.
.
VIRTUES
Tree limbs’
patience.
.
CARS
Flat out
parking lot.
.
BLUE
Grey blue
sky blue.
.
HOLES
Sun’s
shining through
you.
.
TEXAS REVERSE
You all
go.
.
ECHOES
“All god’s
children got—”
.
OLD SONG
“Some sunny
day—”
.
YEAH
Amazing grace
on Willy’s face!
.
HELP
This here
hand’s out.
.
SEE
Brown’s another
color.
.
DOWN
It’s all
over
the floor.
.
WINDOW
Up from reflective
table top’s glass the
other side of it.
.
AROUND
The pinwheel’s pink
plastic spinning
blade’s reversing.
.
EGO
I can
hear I can
see.
.
DAYTIME
It’s got to be
lighter.
.
SPACE
Two candles
light brown—
or yellow?
.
WINDOW SEAT
Cat’s up
on chair’s edge.
.
EYES
All this
color’s yours.
.
GREEN
Plant’s tendrils
hanging from
but not
to—
.
SEASCAPE
Little boat
blue blown
by bay.
.
BIT
.
GROUP
.
WEIGH
Rippled refractive
surface leaves
light lights.
.
THE EDGE
.
QUOTE
“a lot
of thought-
ful
people”
.
GHOST
What you don’t
see you
hear?
.
TEACHER
The big
red
apple.
.
CANDLE HOLDER
Small glass
cube’s opaque
clarity in
window’s light.
.
FIELDS
Meadows
more at home.
.
TABLE TOP
Persian’s
under glass.
Wheels
FOR FUTURA 2000
One around one—
or inside, limit
and dispersal.
Outside, the emptiness
of no edge, round
as the sky—
Or the eye seeing
all go by
in a blur of silence.
Oh
Oh stay awhile,
sad, sagging flesh
and bones gone brittle.
Stay in place,
agèd face, teeth,
don’t go.
Inside and out
the flaccid change
of bodily parts,
mechanics of action,
mind’s collapsing
habits, all
echo here
in mottled skin, blurred eye,
reiterated mumble.
Lift to the vacant air
some sigh, some sign
I’m still inside.
Reading of Emmanuel Levinas
“He does not limit knowledge
nor become the object of thinking . . .”
–KRZYSTZTOF ZIAREK
Thought out of self
left beyond the door
left out at night
shuttered openness
dreams dream of dreaming
inside seeming outside
since left then gone
comes home alone.
.
Puts hands down
no river one place
step over into
the ground sense
place was will be
here and now
nowhere can be
nothing’s left.
.
Outside forms distance
some hundred feet
away in boxed air across
bricked enclosed space
a horizontal young woman
blue coat red pants
asleep on couch seen
through squared window
five floors up in form
above’s blue sky
a lateral cloud
air of solemn thinking.
.
Who else was
when had they come
what was the program
who was one
why me there
what other if
the place was determined
the deed was done?
Water
Your personal world echoes
in ways common enough,
a parking lot, common cold,
the others sitting at the table.
I have no thoughts myself,
more than myself. I feel
here enough now to think
at least I am here.
So you should get to
know me? Would I be
where you looked? Is it
hands across this body of water?
Is anyone out there,
they used to say, or was
they also some remote chance
of people, a company, together.
What one never knows is,
is it really real, is
the obvious obvious, or else
a place one lives in regardless.
Consolatio
What’s gone is gone.
What’s lost is lost.
What’s felt as pulse—
what’s mind, what’s home.
Who’s here, where’s there—
what’s patience now.
What thought of all,
why echo it.
Now to begin—
Why fear the end.
What
What would it be
like walking off
by oneself down
that path in the
classic woods the light
lift of breeze softness
of this early evening and
you want some time
to yourself to think
of it all again
and again an
empty ending?
Senator Blank Bla
nk
I look at your
bland, piglike
face and hear
your thin-lipped,
rhetorical bullshit
and wonder if anyone
can or will believe you,
and know they do,
just that I’m listening to you too.
Better
Would it be better
piecemeal, a little
now and then, or
could one get inside
and hide there, wait
for it to end.
No one’s doing anything to you.
It’s just there’s nothing
they can do for you.
Better with dignity to die?
Better rhetoric would clarify.
“Better Business Bureaus” lie.
Wall
You can push as hard as you want
on this outside side.
It stays limited
to a single face.
USA
Seeing with Sidney people
asleep on floor of subway—
myself worrying about time—
how long it would take to get to the plane—
How far in the universe to get home,
what do you do when you’re still alone,
what do you say when no one asks,
what do you want you don’t take—
When train finally comes in,
there’s nothing you’re leaving, nothing you can.
For an Old Friend
What became of your novel with the lunatic
mistaken for an undercover agent,
of your investment of the insistently vulnerable
with a tender of response,
your thoughtful wish that British letters
might do better than Peter Russell—
Last time I saw you, protesting
in London railway station
that all was changed,
you asked for a tenner
to get back to Bexhill-on-Sea.
Do you ever think of me.
Here
In other
words opaque
disposition intended
for no one’s interest
or determination
forgotten ever
increased but
inflexible and
left afterwards.
Ears Idle Ears
FOR SUSAN
Out one
ear and
in the
other ear
and out
without it.
Blue Moon
The chair’s still there,
but the goddamn sun’s
gone red again—
and instead of Mabel
there is a potato,
or something like that there,
sitting like it owned the place.
It’s got no face
and it won’t speak to anyone.
I’m scared.
If I had legs,
I’d run.
Echo
Rudimentary characteristic of being
where it has to be, this tree
was where it was
a long time before anything else
I know or thought to.
Now it’s pushed out by people—
rather by their effects, the weakening
the insistent wastes produce.
Where can anyone go
finally if the damn trees die
from what’s done to them—what
being so-called alive has come to?
What’s left after such death.
If nothing’s there, who’s here.
Famous Last Words
FOR JOHN CHAMBERLAIN
PLACE
There’s a way out
of here but it
hurts at the edges
where there’s no time left
to be one if
you were and friends
gone, days seemingly
over. No one.
.
LATE
Looks like chunks
will be it
tonight, a bite-sized
lunch of love,
and lots of it,
honey.
.
VERDE
Green, how I love you green . . .
the prettiest color I’ve ever seen,
the way to the roses through them stems,
the way to go when the light changes!
What grass gets when you water it,
or the folding stuff can get you in,
but finally it’s what isn’t dead
unless it’s skin with nothing under it—
or faces green from envy or hunger or fear,
or some parallel biological fact, my dear.
.
BOZO
Bill’s brother was partial
to windows, stood on boxes
looking over their edges.
His head was
higher than his shoulders,
but his eyes were
somewhere down under
where he thought he could
see it all now, all
he’d wanted to, aged four,
looking up under skirts,
wearing ochre-trim western shirts.
Regular slim-jim ranchero,
this vicious, ambitious, duplicitous, no
wish too late, too
small, bozo.
.
MILES
Simple trips, going
places, wasted
feelings, alone
at last, all the rest
of it, counting, keeping
it together, the weather,
the particular people, all
the ways you have to.
.
NIGHT LIGHT
Look at the light
between the lights
at night with the lights
on in the room you’re sitting
in alone again with
the light on trying still
to sleep but bored and
tired of waiting up late
at night thinking of some
stupid simple sunlight.
.
ECHOES (1)
Patience, a peculiar
virtue, waits in time,
depends on time to
make it, thinks it
can have everything
it wants, wants all
of it and echoes
disappointment, thinks
of what it thought
it wanted, nothing else.
.
ECHOES (2)
This intensive going in,
to live there, in
the head, to wait
for what it seems
to want, to look
at all the ways
of looking, seeing
things, to always
think of it, think
thinking’s going to work.
.
LIFE
All the ways to go,
the echoes, made sense.
It was as fast as that,
no time to figure it out.
No simple straight line,
you’d get there in time
enough standing still.
It came to you
whatever you planned to do.
Later, you’d get it together.
Now it was here.
Time to move.
.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
Which way did they go?
Which way did they come.
If it’s not fun, don’t do it.
But I’m sure you wouldn’t.
You can sum it all up in a few words
or less if you want to save time.
No wisdom hasn’t been worn out
by simple repetition.
You’ll be with me till the end?
Good luck, friend.
&nbs
p; Echoes
FOR WILLIAM BRONK
The stars stay up there where they first were.
We have changed but they seem as ever.
What was their company first to be, their curious proposal,
that we might get there which, of course, we did.
How dead now the proposal of life simply, how echoing it is,
how everything we did, we did and thought we did!
Was it always you as one, and them as one,
and one another was us, we thought, a protestant, a complex
determination of this loneliness of human spaces.
What could stars be but something else no longer there,
some echoing light too late to be for us specific.
But there they were and there we saw them.
Eight Plus
Inscriptions for Eight Bollards
at 7th & Figueroa, LA
FOR JAMES SURLS
What’s still here settles
at the edges of this
simple place still
waiting to be seen.
.
I didn’t go
anywhere and
I haven’t
come back!
.
You went by so
quickly thinking
there’s a whole world
in between.
.
It’s not a
final distance,
this here
and now.
.
How much I would
give just to know
you’re standing in
whatever way here.
.
Human eyes
are lights to me
sealed
in this stone.
.
No way to
tell you anything
more than
this one.
.
You walk tired
or refreshed, are
past in a moment,
but saw me.
.
Wish happiness
most for us,
whoever we are,
wherever.
.
If I sit here
long enough,
all will pass me by
one way or another.
.
Nothing left out,
it’s all in a heap,
all the people
completed.
.
Night’s eye is
memory
in
daylight.
.
I’ve come and gone from here
with no effect,
and now feel
no use left.
.
How far from
where it
was I’ll
never know.
.
You there
next to the others
in front of
the one behind!
.
No one speaks
alone. It
comes out
of something.
.
Could I think
of all you
must have felt?
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 16
