The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley
Page 17
Tell me.
.
What’s inside,
what’s the place
apart from
this one?
.
They say this
used to be
a forest
with a lake.
.
I’m just
a common
rock,
talking.
.
World’s
still got
four
corners.
.
What’s
that
up there
looking down?
.
You’ve got a nice
face and
kind eyes and
all the trimmings.
.
We talk like
this too
often someone
will get wise!
Six
HELSINKI WINDOW
“Even if he were to throw out by now absolutely incomprehensible stuff about the burning building and look upon his work simply as an effort of a carpenter to realize a blueprint in his mind, every morning he wakes up and goes to look at his house, it is as if during the night invisible workmen had been monkeying with it, a stringer has been made away with in the night and mysteriously replaced by one of inferior quality, while the floor, so meticulously set by a spirit level the night before, now looks as if it had not even been adjudged by setting a dish of water on it, and cants like the deck of a steamer in a gale. It is for reasons analogous to this perhaps that short poems were invented, like perfectly measured frames thrown up in an instant of inspiration and, left to suggest the rest, in part manage to outwit the process.”
–MALCOLM LOWRY, DARK AS THE GRAVE WHEREIN MY FRIEND IS LAID
X
The trees are kept
in the center of the court,
where they take up room
just to prove it—
and the garbage cans extend
on the asphalt at the far side
under the grey sky and the building’s
recessed, regular windows.
All these go up and down
with significant pattern,
and people look out of them.
One can see their faces.
I know I am safe here
and that no one will get me,
no matter where it is
or who can find me.
Help
Places one’s come to
in a curious stumble, things
one’s been put to, with,
in a common bundle
called suffering humanity
with faces, hands
where they ought to be,
leaving usual bloody traces.
I like myself, he thought, but
it was years and years ago
he could stand there watching
himself like a tv show.
Now you’re inside entirely,
he whispers in mock self-reassurance,
because he recognizes at last, by god,
he’s not all there is.
Small Time
Why so curiously happy
with such patient small agony
not hurting enough
to be real to oneself—
or even intimidated
that it’s at last too late
to make some move
toward something else.
Late sun, late sun,
this far north you still shine,
and it’s all fine,
and there’s still time enough.
Bienvenu
FOR THE COMPANY
OF LISE HOSHOUR, PHILIPPE BRIET,
MICHEL BUTOR, AND ROBERT THERRIEN:
“7&6,” PHILIPPE BRIET GALLERY,
NYC, OCTOBER 7, 1988
Welcome to this bienfait
ministry of interior muses,
thoughtful provocateurs, etc.
All that meets your eye
you’ll hear with ear
of silent surprises
and see these vast surmises
bien entendu by each
autre autrefois. Our
welcome so to you
has come—Mon frère, mon semblable,
and sisters all.
.
Thoughtful little holes in
places makes us
be here.
Empty weather makes
a place of faces
staring in.
Come look at
what we three
have done here.
“Ever Since Hitler . . .”
Ever since Hitler
or well before that
fact of human appetite
addressed with brutal
indifference others
killed or tortured or ate
the same bodies they
themselves had we ourselves
had plunged into density
of selves all seeming stinking
one no possible way
out of it smiled or cried
or tore at it and died
apparently dead at last
just no other way out.
Thinking
I’ve thought of myself
as objective, viz.,
a thing round which
lines could be drawn—
or else placed by years, the average
some sixty, say, a relative
number of months, days,
hours and minutes.
I remember thinking of war
and peace and life
for as long as I can remember.
I think we were right.
But it changes, it thinks
it can all go on forever
but it gets older.
What it wants is rest.
I’ve thought of place
as how long it takes
to get there and of where
it then is.
I’ve thought of clouds, of water
in long horizontal bodies, or
of love and women and the children
which came after.
Amazing what mind makes
out of its little pictures,
the squiggles and dots,
not to mention the words.
Clouds
The clouds passing over, the
wisps still seeming substantial, as
a kid, as a kid I’d see them up there
in the town I grew up in on the hills
in the fields on the way home then
as now still up there, still up there.
All Wall
Vertical skull time
weather blast bombastic disaster impasse time,
like an inside out and back down again design,
despair ready wear impacted beware scare time—
like old Halloween time,
people all gone away and won’t be back time,
no answer weeks later empty gone out dead
a minute ahead of your call just keeps on ringing time—
I’m can’t find my way back again time,
I’m sure it was here but now I can’t find it time,
I’m a drag and sick and losing again wasted time,
You’re the one can haul me out and start it over again
Time. Too much time too little
not enough too much still to go time,
and time after time and not done yet time
nothing left time to go time. Time.
Whatever
Whatever’s
to be
thought
of thinking
thinking’s
thought of
it still
thinks
it thinks
to know
itself so
thought.
.
Thought so
itself know to
&n
bsp; thinks it
thinks still it
of thought
thinking’s
thinking
of thought
be to
whatever’s.
Klaus Reichert and Creeley Send Regards
IN MEMORY L. Z.
Nowhere up there enough
apart as surmised see my
ears feel better in the
air an after word from Romeo’s
delight spells the and a
aged ten forever friend
you’ll know all this by heart.
Echoes
What kind of crows,
grey and black, fussy
like jays, flop
on the tree branches?
“What kind of
love is this” flops
flat nightly, sleeps
away the days?
What kind of place
is this? What’s out there
in these wet unfamiliar
streets and flattened,
stretched faces?
Who’s been left here,
what’s been wasted
again.
Fools
1
Stripped trees in the wet wind,
leaves orange yellow, some still green,
winter’s edge in the air,
the close, grey sky . . .
Why not be more
human, as they say,
more thoughtful,
why not try to care.
The bleak alternative’s
a stubborn existence—
back turned to all,
pathetic resistance.
2
You’d think the fact
another’s tried it
in the common world
might be a language
like the animals
seem to know
where they’ve come from
and where they’ll go.
Curse the fool
who closes his sad door—
or any other more
still tries to open it.
Meat
Blood’s on the edge of it
the man with the knife cuts into it
the way out is via the door to it
the moves you have mean nothing to it
but you can’t get away from it
there’s nothing else left but it
have you had enough of it
you won’t get away from it
this room is thick with it
this air smells of it
your hands are full of it
your mouth is full of it
why did you want so much of it
when will you quit it
all this racket is still it
all that sky is it
that little spot is it
what you still can think of is it
anything you remember is it
all you ever got done is always it
your last words will be it
your last wish will be it
The last echo it last faint color it
the drip the trace the stain—it.
New Year’s Resolution
What one might say
wanting to do it,
hoping to solve it,
make resolution—
You break it to bits,
swallow the pieces,
finally quit quitting,
accept it, forget it.
But what world is this
has such parts,
or makes even thinkable
paradoxic new starts—
Turn of the year
weighs in the cold
all that’s proposed
simply to change it.
Still, try again
to be common, human,
learn from all
how to be one included.
The Drunks of Helsinki
Blue sky, a lurching tram makes
headway through the small city.
The quiet company sits shyly,
avoiding its image, else talks
with securing friends. This
passage is through life as if
in dream. We know our routes
and mean to get there. Now
the foetid stink of human excess,
plaintive, and the person beside us
lurches, yet stays stolidly there.
What are the signals? Despair,
loss of determinants—or a world
just out of a bottle? Day
after day they clutter the tram
stops, fall sodden over seats
and take their drunken ease in
the fragile world. I think, they
are the poets, the maledictive,
muttering words, fingers pointing,
pointing, jabbed outright across
aisle to blank side of bank or
the company’s skittish presence.
I saw a man keep slamming the post
with his fist, solid in impact,
measured blows. His semblable sat
slumped in front of me, a single seat.
They meet across the aisle in ranting voices,
each talking alone. In a place of
so few words sparely chosen, their
panegyric slabbering whine has human
if unexpected resonance. They
speak for us, their careful friends, the sober
who scuttle from side to side in vacantly
complex isolation, in a company has compact
consensus, minds empty of all conclusion.
Helsinki Window
FOR ANSELM HOLLO
Go out into brightened
space out there the fainter
yellowish place it
makes for eye to enter out
to greyed penumbra all the
way to thoughtful searching
sight of all beyond that
solid red both brick and seeming
metal roof or higher black
beyond the genial slope I
look at daily house top on
my own way up to heaven.
.
Same roof, light’s gone
down back of it, behind
the crying end of day, “I
need something to do,” it’s
been again those other
things, what’s out there,
sodden edge of sea’s
bay, city’s graveyard, park
deserted, flattened aspect,
leaves gone colored fall
to sidewalk, street, the end
of all these days but
still this regal light.
.
Trees stripped, rather shed
of leaves, the black solid trunks up
to fibrous mesh of smaller
branches, it is weather’s window,
weather’s particular echo, here
as if this place had been once,
now vacant, a door that had had
hinges swung in air’s peculiar
emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere,
asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of
linearly absolute black metal fence.
.
Old sky freshened with cloud bulk
slides over frame of window the
shadings of softened greys a light
of air up out of this dense high
structured enclosure of buildings
top or pushed up flat of bricked roof
frame I love I love the safety of
small world this door frame back
of me the panes of simple glass yet
airy up sweep of birch trees sit in
flat below all designation declaration
here as clouds move so simply away.
.
Windows now lit close out the
upper dark the night’s a face
three eyes far fainter than
the d
ay all faced with light
inside the room makes eye reflective
see the common world
as one again no outside coming
in no more than walls and postcard
pictures place faces across
that cautious dark the tree no
longer seen more than black edge
close branches somehow still between.
.
He was at the edge of this
reflective echo the words blown
back in air a bubble of suddenly
apparent person who walked to
sit down by the familiar brook and
thought about his fading life
all “fading life” in tremulous airy
perspect saw it hover in the surface
of that moving darkness at the edge
of sun’s passing water’s sudden depth
his own hands’ knotted surface the
sounding in himself of some other.
.
One forty five afternoon red
car parked left hand side
of street no distinguishing
feature still wet day a bicycle
across the way a green door-
way with arched upper window
a backyard edge of back wall
to enclosed alley low down small
windows and two other cars green
and blue parked too and miles
and more miles still to go.
.
This early still sunless morning when a chair’s
creak translates to cat’s cry a blackness still
out the window might be apparent night when the
house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of
immense empty silence and I feel the children
still breathing still shifting their dreams an
enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one
centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the
leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen
unknown placed out there in night I can feel all
about me still sitting in this small spare pool of
light watching the letters the words try to speak.
.
Classic emptiness it
sits out there edge of
hierarchic roof top it
marks with acid fine edge
of apparent difference it
is there here here that
sky so up and out and where
it wants to be no birds no
other thing can for a
moment distract it be
beyond its simple space.
What
What had one thought the
outside was but place all
evident surface and each