The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

  wasn’t where you said it

  would be, where you looked

  wasn’t where it was! What

  fact of common world is

  presumed common? The

  objectifying death of all

  human person, the ground?

  There you are and I look

  to see you still, all

  the distance still implacable.

  The Cup

  Who had thought

  echo precedent,

  shadow the seen

  thing, action

  reflective—

  whose thought was

  consequential,

  itself an act, a

  walking round rim

  to see what’s within.

  Chain

  Had they told you, you

  were “four or more cells

  joined end to end” the Latin,

  catena, “a chain,” the loop,

  the running leap to actual

  heaven spills at my stunned

  feet, pours out the imprisoning

  threads of genesis,

  oh light beaded necklace,

  chain round my neck, my

  inexorably bound birth, the sweet

  closed curve of fading life?

  East Street

  Sense of the present

  world out window, eye’s

  blurred testament

  to “St Francis Xavier’s

  School,” red brick

  and grey cornices,

  the snow, day old,

  like thin, curdled milk,

  God’s will high

  above on cross

  at church top over

  embedded small arches

  and close, tiled

  roof. The cars

  parked, the accelerating

  motor of one

  goes by, the substantial

  old birch, this

  closer look—

  path Dennis shoveled—

  distraction of all report.

  Baroque

  Would you live your life spectrum

  of fly sealed in amber block’s

  walk the patient fixed window see

  days a measure of tired time a

  last minute thought of whatever not

  now remembered lift up sit down

  then be reminded the dog is your

  paradigm seven years to one all

  reckoned think out muse on be sud-

  denly outside the skin standing

  upright pimpled distinction chilled

  independence found finally only one?

  For Nothing Else

  For nothing else,

  this for love

  for what other

  one is this

  for love once

  was and is

  for love,

  for love.

  Parts

  FOR SUSAN ROTHENBERG

  HUMAN LEG GOAT LEG

  Which the way echoed

  previous cloven-hoofed

  dark field faint formed

  those goat men leading her

  in physical earth’s spring

  jumps one-legged parallel

  long walked thinned out

  to sparse grounded skin

  bones of what scale say

  now goat transforms man

  then man goat become

  and dances dances?

  SNAKE FISH BIRD

  Archaic evolving thing

  in all surface all beginning

  not hair or any seeming simple

  extension bring to mind pattern

  of woven wetnesses waste a streak

  of wonder of evil tokens the underneath

  beside ground’s depths spoken

  low in sight soundless in height

  look past reflection see the light

  flash of finned ripple wing

  this ancient Fellow follow

  to weather, to water, to earth.

  HORSE LEG DOG HEAD

  Its mute uncute cutoff

  inconsequent eye slot

  centuries’ habits accumulate

  barks the determined dog

  beside horse the leg the

  walking length the patent

  patient slight bent limb

  long fetlock faith faint

  included instructions placed

  aside gone all to vacant

  grass placed patiently thus

  foot’s function mind’s trust.

  DOG LEG WHEEL

  Four to the round

  repetitive inexorable

  sound the wheel the whine

  the wishes of dogs

  that the world be real

  that masters feel

  that bones be found

  somewhere in the black ground

  in front or in back

  before and behind

  hub for a head bark’s

  a long way back. And on

  GOAT’S EYE

  Eye hole’s peculiar framed

  see you, want you, think

  of eye out, lost last sight,

  past goat thoughts, what

  was it, when or why—

  Or if still the stiff

  hair, musk, the way

  eye looks out, black

  line contracted, head’s skull

  unstudied, steady,

  it led to lust, follows

  its own way down to dust.

  DOG HEAD WITH RABBIT LEG

  Break the elliptical

  make the face deadpan tell

  nothing to it smile for the

  camera lie down and roll over

  be in complex pieces for once

  you ran the good race broke

  down and what’s left you

  least of all can understand.

  It was cold. It was hard.

  Dogs barked. Rabbits ran.

  It comes to such end,

  friend. Such is being dead.

  DOG HEAD WITH CRESCENT MOON

  Harvested this head’s

  a manifest of place the

  firmament’s fundament.

  Overhead sky’s black night

  in lieu of echoed moon

  seems sounding out

  a crescent crescendo

  for a dog’s life.

  Barked bones soft

  mouth’s brought home

  the arc again the light.

  Waits patient for reward.

  BIRD AND CALF

  Peculiar patience is death

  like an envelope a flap

  a postulate you’d left a

  space where it was and it

  has gathered the outside

  of its body in or just

  flopped down dropped all

  alternative forever waiting

  for the plummeting streak

  gets closer closer and

  the god who cleans up things

  puts death to work.

  HORSES’ BREATH

  Had never known blue air’s

  faded fascination had never

  seen or went anywhere never

  was a horse unridden but on

  one proverbial frosty morning

  whilst going to the kitchen

  I thought of our lives’ opaque

  addiction to distances to

  all the endless riders etched

  on those faint horizons and

  nuzzled the mere idea of you—

  swapped breath. Oh love, be true!

  Two

  White Fence/White Fence

  (FOR PAUL STRAND’S PHOTOGRAPH “WHITE FENCE”)

  Particularizing “White

  Fence” beyond which

  the seeming

  echoes of barn, house,

  bright light flat

  on foursquare

  far building while

  in closer view shades

  darken the faint ground.

  Yet fence as
>
  image or word,

  white or black, or

  where place the person,

  the absent,

  in this ring of focus?

  I come closer, see

  in there the

  wistful security,

  all in apparent place,

  the resonant design, diamond,

  the dark/light,

  the way all plays to pattern,

  the longed for world

  of common facts.

  Then this fence again,

  as if pasted on,

  pushes out and across,

  a static, determined

  progress of detailing

  edges, American, an

  odd reason so forced

  to be seen. It

  cannot accommodate,

  cannot let get past,

  unaffected, any, must be

  “White Fence.”

  East Street Again

  FOR CARL RAKOSI

  The tree stands clear in the weather

  by the telephone pole, its stiff brother.

  Hard to think which is the better,

  given living is what we’re here for

  and that one’s soon dead no matter.

  Neither people nor trees live forever.

  But it’s a dumb thought, lacking other.

  Only this passing faint snow now for tether—

  mind’s deadness, emptiness for pleasure—

  if such a flat, faint echo can be measure.

  So much is forgotten no matter.

  You do what you can do, no better.

  Sonnets

  FOR KEITH AND ROSMARIE

  Come round again the banal

  belligerence almost a

  flatulent echo of times

  when still young the Sino

  etc conflict starvation lists

  of people without work or place

  world so opaque and desperate

  no one wanted even to

  go outside to play even

  with Harry Buddy who hit

  me who I hit stood slugging

  while they egged us on.

  .

  While ignorant armies clash

  bash while on the motorway

  traffic backed up while they

  stand screaming at each other

  while they have superior

  armaments so wage just

  war while it all provokes

  excuses alternatives money

  time wasted go tell it

  on the town dump deadend

  avoidance of all you might

  have lived with once.

  .

  Someone told me to stand

  up to whoever pushed me

  down when talking walking

  hand on friend’s simple

  pleasures thus abound when

  one has fun with one

  another said surrogate

  God and planted lettuce

  asparagus had horses cows

  the farm down the road

  the ground I grew up

  on unwon unending.

  .

  I’d take all the learned

  manner of rational un-

  derstanding away leave

  the table to stand on

  its own legs the plates

  to stick there the food

  for who wants it the places

  obvious and ample and

  even in mind think it

  could be other than an

  argument a twisting

  away tormented unless.

  .

  Me is finally unable having

  as all seem to ended with

  lost chances happily enough

  missed the boat took them

  all to hell on a whim

  went over whatever precipice

  but no luck just stupid

  preoccupation common

  fear of being overly hurt

  by the brutal exigencies were

  what pushed and pulled

  me too to common cause.

  .

  So being old and wise and

  unwanted left over from

  teeth wearing hands wearing

  feet wearing head wearing

  clothes I put on take now

  off and sleep or not or sit

  this afternoon morning night

  time’s patterns look up at

  stars overhead there what

  do they mean but how useless

  all violence how far away you

  are from what you want.

  .

  Some people you just

  know and recognize,

  whether a need or fact,

  a disposition at that

  moment is placed,

  you’re home, a light

  is in that simple

  window forever— As if

  people had otherwise always

  to be introduced, told

  you’re ok— But here

  you’re home, so longed

  for, so curiously

  without question found.

  Other

  Having begun in thought there

  in that factual embodied wonder

  what was lost in the emptied lovers

  patience and mind I first felt there

  wondered again and again what for

  myself so meager and finally singular

  despite all issued therefrom whether

  sister or mother or brother and father

  come to love’s emptied place too late

  to feel it again see again first there

  all the peculiar wet tenderness the care

  of her for whom to be other was first fate.

  Body

  Slope of it,

  hope of it—

  echoes faded,

  what waited

  up late inside

  old desires

  saw through

  the screwed importunities.

  This regret?

  Nothing’s left.

  Skin’s old,

  story’s told—

  but still touch,

  selfed body,

  wants other,

  another mother

  to him, her

  insistent “sin”

  he lets in

  to hold him.

  Selfish bastard,

  headless catastrophe.

  Sans tits, cunt,

  wholly blunt—

  fucked it up,

  roof top, loving cup,

  sweatered room,

  old love’s tune.

  Age dies old,

  both men and women cold,

  hold at last no one,

  die alone.

  Body lasts forever,

  pointless conduit,

  floods in its fever,

  so issues others parturient.

  Through legs wide,

  from common hole site,

  aching information’s dumb tide

  rides to the far side.

  “You Were Never Lovelier . . .”

  FOR CLETUS

  Inside that insistence—

  small recompense— Persistence—

  No sense in witless

  thoughtlessness, no one

  has aptitude for waiting—

  hating, staying away later,

  alone, left over, saw

  them all going

  without her (him), wanted

  one for him (her)self, left

  on the shelf, “them” become

  fact of final indifference—

  The theme is thoughtlessness,

  the mind’s openness, the

  head’s large holes, the gaps

  in apparent thinking. So that

  amorphic trucks drive through

  you, mere, mired, if unmoved,

  agency, left by the proposed “they”

  to stay, alone of all that was.

  The world is, or
seems, entirely

  an aggression, a running over, an

  impossible conjunct of misfits

  crash about, hurting one another.

  No names please, no no one or someone.

  Say goodbye to the nonexistent—never

  having lived again or ever, mindless—

  trucks, holes, clouds, call them—

  those sounds of shapes in tides of space—

  pillaging weather, shifting about one

  or two or simply several again, an issue

  only of surmise, a surprise of

  sunset or sunrise, a day or two can’t

  think about or move out, or be again certain,

  be about one’s own business, be vanity’s own simpleton,

  simply, You Were Never Lovelier . . .

  Reflection

  It must be low key

  breeze blowing through

  room’s emptiness is

  something to think of—

  but not enough

  punch, pain enough,

  despair to make

  all else fade out—

  This morning, that

  morning? Another ample

  day in the diminishing

  possibility, the

  reflective reality

  alters to place

  in specific place

  what can’t get past.

  The Old Days

  Implicit echo of the

  seemingly friendly

  face and grace as well

  to be still said. Go to hell

  (or heaven), old American

  saying— My sister’s friends

  are affectionate people,

  and also seemingly real.

  Can I calculate—as to say,

  can I still stay up late

  enough to catch Santa Claus or

  New Year’s, are the small, still

  tenets of truth still observable—

  And how is your mother? Dead, sir,

  these less than twenty years.

  The voice echoes the way it was—

  And if I am mistaken, sir.

  If I am thought in error, was the error

  intentional, did I mean to confuse you.

  Were the great waves of myriad voices too

  much of enough— You remember Cocteau’s A little

  too much is enough for me— Tits were beautiful—

  bubbles of unstable flesh, pure, tilting pleasure.

  You cannot finally abjure beauty

  nor can you simply live without it—

  reflective, beating your meat, unspeakable,

  light headed with loneliness. Oh to be old

  enough, fall down the stairs, break everything—

  One often did but in such company

  was heaven— Breath, arms, eyes,

  and consummate softness— Breathing softness,

  moist, simply conjoining softness, like a pillow.

  No man is an island, no woman a pillow—