The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

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