supposed perspect touched
texture all the wet implicit
world was adamant edge of
limit responsive if indifferent
and changing (one thought) inside
its own evident kind one
banged upon abstract insensitive
else echoed in passing
was it the movement one’s own?
Voice
Bears down on
the incisive way to
make a point common
enough speaking
in various terms it
says the way of
satisfaction is a
lowly thing echo
even wants to can
come along alone in-
clusion also a way
particularizing life.
So Much
When he was a kid sick
in bed out the window
the clouds were thick and
like castles, battlements he’d
think he could climb up to
them, a veritable jack in
the beanstalk high there with
sun and blue air he’d never
need anything more again to
get well, so it had to fade
away, whatever that old voice
enlarges, so much to depend upon.
Echo
FOR J. L.
Outside the
trees
make limit of
simple
sight. The
weather is
a grey, cold on
the
skin. It feels
itself
as if a place it
couldn’t
ever get to
had been at
last
entered.
Winter Night
Buildings high bulk lifts
up the mass is lighter in this
curiously illumined darkness air
somehow fragile with the light is
beyond again in yellow lit win-
dows frame of the bars and behind
a seeming room the lamp on the
table there such peculiar small
caring such signs five floors up
or out window see balcony’s iron
frame against snowed roof’s white
or pinkish close glow all beyond.
Fading Light
Now one might catch it see it
shift almost substantial blue
white yellow light near roof’s edge
become intense definition think
of the spinning world is it as
ever this plate of apparent life
makes all sit patient hold on
chute the sled plunges down ends
down the hill beyond sight down
into field’s darkness as time for
supper here left years behind waits
patient in mind remembers the time.
Old Mister Moonlight
Split broken un-
circumvented excised
walked out door snow
day freaking thoughts
of empty memory back
past time gone undone
left car side pool
of greying edged
rings fledged things
wedged buildings all
patterns and plans fixed
focus death again.
For J. L.
The ducks are gone
back to the pond, the echo
of it all a curious
resonance now it’s
over, life’s like that?
What matters, so soon become fact.
Night
This bluish light behind the block of
building this familiar returning
night comes closer this way can sit
looking see the bulk of it take shape
in front of the sky comes now up from
behind it up to mount its light its
yellow quiet squares fix a front in
the dark to be there make a static
place looks like home in dark’s
ambivalence sit down to stay awhile
places there black’s dominance a shade it
rides to closes it shuts it finally off.
March
Almost at the dulled
window fact the wet
birches soften in melt-
ing weather up still from
far ground the backyard
asphalt grey plastic garbage
bins the small squat
blackened pile of stubborn
snow still sit there echo
of fading winter all the days
we waited for this side
of spring changes everything.
First Love
Oh your face is there a mirror days
weeks we lived those other places in
all that ridiculous waste the young we
wanted not to be walked endless streets
in novels read about life went home at
night to sleep in tentative houses left
one another somewhere now unclear no per-
sons really left but for paper a child or
two or three and whatever physical events
were carved then on that tree like initials
a heart a face of quiet blood and somehow
you kept saying and saying an unending pain.
Spring Light
Could persons be as this
fluffed light golden spaces
intent airy distances so up
and out again they are here
the evening lowers against the sun
the night waits far off at the
edge and back of dark is summer’s
light that slanting clarity all
wonders come again the bodies open
stone stillness stunned in the silence
hovering waiting touch of air’s edge
piece of what had not been lost.
Echoes
. . . Sea, hill and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin-blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
–S. T. COLERIDGE,
“FROST AT MIDNIGHT”
One
My New Mexico
FOR GUS BLAISDELL
Edge of door’s window
sun against
flat side adobe,
yellowed brown—
A blue lifting morning,
miles of spaced echo,
time here plunged
backward, backward—
I see shadowed leaf
on window frame green,
close plant’s growth,
weathered fence slats—
All passage explicit,
the veins, hands,
lined faces crease,
determined—
Oh sun! Three years,
when I came first,
it had shone unblinking,
sky vast aching blue—
The sharpness of each
shift the pleasure,
pain, of particulars—
All inside gone out.
Sing me a song
makes beat specific,
takes the sharp air,
echoes this silence.
Brick
Have I bricked up unbricked what
p
erspective hole break of eye
seen what glowing place what
flower so close grows from a
tiny brown seed or was it what
I wanted this after imaged green
round sun faints under blue sky
or outer space that place no
one knows but for this echo of
sketched in color the stems of
the voluptuous flowers patient
myself inside looking still out.
Bowl
He comes she comes carrying carrying
a flower an intense interest a color
curious placed in an outer an inner
ring of rounded spaces of color it
looked this way they say it was here
and there it was it opened opens color
it sees itself seen faithful to echo
more than all or was the green seeming
back of it fragile shoots a way it was
yellow banded together zigzagged across
as a box for it wants to touch touches
opens at the edges a flower in a bowl.
Shadow
There is a shadow
to intention a place
it comes through and
is itself each stasis
of its mindedness ex-
plicit walled into
semblance it is a
seemingly living place
it wants it fades it
comes and goes it puts
a yellow flower in a pot
in a circle and looks.
Figure of Fun
Blue dressed aged blonde
person with pin left
lapel hair bulged to
triangular contained wide
blue grey eyed now
authority prime minister
of aged realm this
hallowed hollowed ground
lapped round with salted water
under which a tunnel runs
to far off France and history
once comfortably avoided.
Waldoboro Eve
Trees haze in the fog coming in,
late afternoon sun still catches the stones.
Dog’s waiting to be fed by the empty sink,
I hear the people shift in their rooms.
That’s all finally there is to think.
Now comes night with the moon and the stars.
Old
Framed roof slope from tower’s window
out to grey wet field with green growth,
edge again of midfield hedgerow and trees beyond,
the tugging familiar, the fading off fogged distance—
Are these memories already?
Does it seem to me I see what’s there.
Have I particulars still to report,
is my body myself only?
Hear the cricket, the keening slight
sound of insect, the whirring of started
vacuum cleaner, television’s faint voices now
down below. Here is world.
Old Words
The peculiar fuck it
cunt shit violence
of a past learned in
school all words only
one by one first heard
never forgotten as recall
head or heart vagaries
a dusk now so early
in the afternoon the wet
feel of days socks touch
of things said to me
forever please fuck me.
Translation
You have all the time been
here if not seen, not thought
of as present, for when I
looked I saw nothing, when
I looked again, you had
returned. This echo, sweet
spring, makes a human sound
you have no need of, facts
so precede, but you hear, you
hear it, must feel the intent
wetness, mushy. I melt again
into your ample presence.
Self Portrait
This face was detachable
as blurred head itself
lifted from old bookcover
library yielded a faded
years ago image graced
now newspaper’s rushed
impression static glossed
sentiment “life” a few hours
more to “live” till wrapped
tight round fresh loaf delivered
come home eaten comes to rest
on yesterday’s garbage.
Here Again
He was walking
toward the other in-
viting him for-
ward now with an
eager anticipation
he could rec-
ognize if not al-
together trust him-
self with any-
one else still
waiting also
to be met.
Echo
Entire memory
hangs tree
in mind to see
a bird be—
but now puts stutter
to work, shutters
the windows, shudders,
sits and mutters—
because can’t
go back, still
can’t get
out. Still can’t.
Pure
Why is it pure
so defeats, makes
simple possibility
cringe in opposition—
That bubbling, mingled
shit with water
lifted from bathtub’s
drain hole’s no
stranger to me,
nor ever in mind
blurred image, words
won’t say what’s
asked of them. I
think the world I think,
wipe my relentless ass,
wash hands under faucet.
Eyes
I hadn’t noticed that
building front had narrow
arrowlike division going
up it the stairwell at
top a crest like spearpoint
red roofed it glistens
with rain the top sharply
drawn horizontal roof edge lets
sky back there be a faint
blue a fainter white light
growing longer now higher
going off out of sight.
Some
You have not simply
insisted on yourself
nor argued
the irrelevance
of any one else. You
have always wanted
to be friends, to be
one of many.
Persuaded
life even
in its largeness
might be brought
to care, you
tried to make it
care, humble, illiterate,
awkward gestured.
So you thought,
as inevitable age approached,
some loved you,
some.
You waited for
some wind
to lift, some
thing to happen,
proving it finally,
making sense more
than the literal,
still separate.
Echo
White light blocked
impulse of repose like
Wouldn’t you tell me
what you were doing Couldn’t
I go where you go Faith
you kept secretly because it
had no other place to be My
eyeball’s simple hole wherein
‘the gold gathered the
glow around it’ All you
said you wanted fainted
All the ways to say No
There
Seeming act
of thought’s
gagging
insight out
there’s spasmodi
c
patience a wreck
car’s hauled
now away
another day’s
gone to hell
you know like
hangs out.
Here Only
Why does it cry so much
facing its determined despair—
As woman locked in cage—
child—or eyes only left to look—
Why— What wanted— Why is it
this way or that way thrashes
stubborn only in its absence—
It was never there—was only
here to be itself—here only this
one chance to be— Cannot live
except it finds a place given—
Open to itself only as any—
It
Nothing there
in absence as,
unfelt, it
repeated itself—
I saw it,
felt it,
wanted
to belt it—
Oh love, you
watch, you
are so
“patient”—
Or what
word makes my
malice
more.
Death
Unlet things
static dying
die in common
pieces less
crescendo
be it simple
complex death
a physical
world again un-
ended unbegun to
any other world
be this one.
Here and Now
Never other than this unless
is counted sudden, demanded
sense of falling or a loud,
inexplicable yell just back
of ears, or if the tangible
seeming world rears up dis-
torted, bites hands that would
feed it, can feel no agreeable
sensation in the subject’s hardly
learned vocabulary of social
moves, agreements, mores—
then up shit creek sans paddle.
Abstract
The inertia unexpected of
particular reference, it
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 18
