throat’s stuck.
Fist’s a weak grip,
ears blotted with echoes,
mind fails focus
and’s lost.
Feet first,
feet last,
what difference,
down or up.
You were the shape
I took in the dark.
You the me
apprehended.
Wonders!
Simple fools,
rulers, all of us
die too.
On the way
much happiness
of a day,
no looking back.
Onward
“We cannot give you any support
if we don’t know who you are.”
You cannot drive on this road
if you do not have a car.
I cannot sleep at night
if I won’t go to bed.
They used to be my friends
but now they are dead.
One Way
Oh I so
like the
avoidance
common
to patient
person stands
on curb waiting
to cross.
Why not run out
get clobbered truck
car or bus
busted
to bits
smiling even
in defeat
stay simple.
Such sizing up
of reality
whiff of reaction
you will not
walk far alone
already the crowd
is with you or else
right behind.
I see you
myself sit
down walk too
no different
just the patient
pace we keep
defeats us
in the street.
The Wordsworths
FOR WARREN
The Wordsworths afoot
fresh fields’ look
birds hop on gravestone
small lake beyond
up long dank road
Coleridge’s home—
Out this window I see
a man turning hay
early sun’s edge
strike the green hedge
a blue round of field flower
mark the fresh hour
high spike of mullein
look over walled stone—
House slope blacked roof
catches eye’s proof
returns me to day
passed far away
Dorothy took note,
William wrote.
Here
Seen right of head,
window’s darkening outlook
to far field’s slope
past green hedgerow.
Here, slanted lengthening
sun on back wall’s
dancing shadows,
now comes night.
Five Variations on “Elation”
FOR BILL McCLUNG
This sudden
uplift elation’s
pride’s brought out!
Even ambiguity’s
haughtily exalted oh
rushed, raised spirit.
.
Rushed unexpected my
heart leaps up when
I behold the sudden
as in the common.
.
Curiously with pride
above common lot to walk,
to be lifted up
and out, exalted.
.
His elation was brief?
Brought back to earth,
still for a time
it was otherwise.
.
Faded but unforgotten
if down once
uplifted if unsure
once proud if
inside once out.
.
ECHO
Elation’s ghost
dance echoes
little, leaves no
traces, counts
no number—
Wants from no
one privilege. Has
no pride by being it.
If then recognized,
needs no company.
What wind’s echo,
uplifted spirit?
Archaic feelings
flood the body.
Ah! accomplished.
Edges
FOR PEN’S BIRTHDAY (EVERYDAY)
Edges of the field, the blue flowers, the reddish wash of
the grasses, the cut green path up to the garden
plot overgrown with seedlings and weeds—
green first of all, but light, the cut of the sunlight
edges each shift of the vivid particulars, grown large
—even the stones large in their givens, the shadows massing
their bulk, and so seeing I could follow out to another
edge of the farther field, where trees are thick on the sky’s
edge, thinking I am not simply a response to this, this light,
not just an agency sees and vaguely adumbrates, adds an opinion.
There is no opinion for life, no word more or less general.
I had begun and returned, again and again, to find you finally,
felt it all gather, as here, to be a place again, and wanted to
shuck the husk of habits, to lift myself to you in this sunlight.
If it is age, then what does age matter? If it is older or younger,
what moment notes it? In this containment there cannot
be another place or time. It all lives by its being
here and now, this persistent pleasure, ache of promise, misery of all ‹that’s lost.
Now as if this moment had somehow secured to itself a body,
had become you, just here and now, the wonders inseparable
in this sunlight, here, had come to me again.
Billboards
AGE
Walking on
the same
feet
birth
provided,
I is not
the simple
question
after all,
nor you
an interesting
answer.
MORAL
Practice
your humility
elsewhere
’cause it’s just another
excuse for privilege,
another place not
another’s, another
way you get to get.
BIG TIME
What you got
to kill now isn’t
dead enough
already? Wait,
brother, it dies, it
no way can live
without you, it’s
waiting in line.
ECHO
It was a thoughtful
sense of paced
consideration,
whatever the agenda
had prompted as
subject. “Here we
are,” for example, or
“There they were” . . .
So all together now,
a deep breath, a
fond farewell.
Over.
TRUE OR FALSE
“One little
freckle
houses
bacteria
equal
to the population
of New York—”
You cannot
breathe, scratch
or move
sans killing
what so
lives on you.
There are
no vacancies, no
rooms with a view.
DREAM
What’s the truth
for except it
makes a place for
common entrances, an
old way home down
the street ’mid
st faces,
the sounds’ flooding
poignance, the approach?
Sky
Now that the weather softens the
end of winter in the tips of
trees’ buds grow lighter a yellow
air of lifting slight but persistent
warmth you walk past the street’s
far corner with turbanlike color swathed
hat and broad multicolored shawl hangs
down over your trunklike blue cloth
coat with legs black dog’s tugging
pull on leash’s long cord I walk quickly
to catch up to you pulled equally by
your securing amplitude, blue love!
A Book
FOR PAM AND LEW
A book of such
sweetness the
world attends
one after
another a found
explicit fondness
mends the tear
threads intercross
here where there
repairs a cluster
comes mitigates
irritation reads words.
A View at Evening
Cut neat path out
to darkening
garden plot
old field’s forgot.
Far hedge row’s
growth goes
down the hill
where blurred
trees depend,
find an end
in distance
under dark clouds.
The upright space,
place, fades sight,
sees echoes,
green, green, green.
This Room
Each thing given
place in the pattern
rather find
place in mind
a diverse face
absent past
shelf of habits
bits pieces
eye lost then
love’s mistakes
aunt’s battered house
off foundation
children’s recollection
tokens
look back
chipped broken
room goes on
dark winter’s edge
now full with sun
pales the worn rug.
Sins
A hand’s part,
mouth’s open look,
foot beside
the long leg.
Away again.
Inside the house
open windows
look out.
It was fun.
Then it’s gone.
Come again
some time.
Time’s Fixed
Time’s fixed
as ticking instrument,
else day’s insistent
ending into
which one walks,
finds the door shut,
and once again
gets caught, gets caught.
A captive heart,
a head, a hand,
an ear, the empty bed
is here—
A dull, an
unresponding man
or woman dead
to plan or plot.
Between what was
and what might be
still seems to be
a life.
Heaven
Wherever they’ve
gone they’re
not here
anymore
and all
they stood
for is empty
also.
Echoes
In which the moment
just left reappears or
seems as if present
again its fact intact—
In which a willing
suspension of disbelief
alters not only the judgment
but all else equally—
In which the time passes
vertically goes up and
up to a higher place a
plane of singular clarity—
In which these painfully small
endings shreds of emptying
presence sheddings of seeming
person can at last be admitted.
Echo
It was never
simple to wait,
to sit quiet.
Was there still
another way round,
a distance to go—
as if an echo
hung in
the air before
one was heard,
before a word
had been said.
What was love
and where
and how did one get there.
Echo
The return of things
round the great
looping bend in the road
where you remember
stood in mind
greyed encumbrances
patient dead dog
long lost love
till chair’s rocking
became roar
sitting static
end of vision
day seems held up
by white hands were
looking for what was
gone couldn’t come
back what was with
it wouldn’t come looking.
Echo
FOR ECK
Find your way out
no doubt
or in
again begin
Spaces wait
faced
in the dark
no waste
Were there
was here
was
always near
Sit down to see
be quiet be
friend
the end
Valentine
FOR PEN
Home’s still heart
light in the window
all the familiar
tokens of patience
moved finally out
to let place be
real as it can be
people people
all as they are
and pasteboard red heart
sits there on table
inside the thump bump
passing thought
practical meat
slur and slurp
contracting lump
all for you
wanting a meaning
without you
it would stop
Coda
ROMAN SKETCHBOOK
Roman Sketchbook
AS
As you come and go
from a place you sense
the way it might seem
to one truly there as
these clearly determined persons
move on the complex spaces
and hurry to their obvious
or so seeming to you
destinations. “Home,” you think,
“is a place still there for all,”
yet now you cannot
simply think it was
or can be the same. It
starts with a small
dislocating ache, the foot
had not been that problem,
but you move nonetheless
and cannot remember the word
for foot, fuss, pied? some
thing, a childhood pleasure
she said she could put her
foot in her mouth but
that way is the past again
someone’s, the greying air
looks like evening here, the
traffic moves so densely,
you push close to the walls
of the buildings, the stinking
cars, bikes, people push by.
No fun in being one here,
you have to think. You must
have packed home in mind,
made it up, and yet all
people wait there, still patient
if distr
acted by what happens.
Out in the night the lights
go on, the shower has cleared the air.
You have a few steps more to the door.
You see it open as you come up, triggered
by its automatic mechanism, a greeting
of sorts, but no one would think of that.
You come in, you walk to the room.
IN THE CIRCLE
In the circle of an
increased limit all
abstracted felt event now
entered at increasing distance
ears hear faintly eye sees
the fading prospects and
intelligence unable to get the
name back fails and posits
the blank. It largely moves
as a context, habit of being
here as there approaches, and
one pulls oneself in to prepare
for the anticipated slight shock—
boat bumping the dock, key
turning in lock, the ticking clock?
APOSTROPHE
Imaginal sharp distances we
push out from, confident
travelers, whose worlds are
specific to bodies— Realms of
patient existence carried without
thought come to unexpected end
here where nothing waits.
HERE
Back a street is the sunken
pit of the erstwhile market
first century where the feral
cats now wait for something
to fall in and along the
far side is the place where
you get the bus, a broad
street divided by two
areas for standing with a
covered provision, etc. Antichi!
Zukofsky’d say—all of it
humbling age, the pitted, pitiful
busts someone’s sprayed with blue
paint, the small streets laboring
with compacted traffic, the generous
dank stink floods the evening air.
Where can we go we will not
return to? Each moment, somewhere.
READING/RUSSELL SAYS, “THERE IS NO RHINOCEROS IN THIS ROOM”
Wittgenstein’s insistence to Russell’s
equally asserted context of world as
experienced things was it’s propositions
we live in and no “rhinoceros” can
proceed other than fact of what so states
it despite you look under tables or chairs
and open all thinking to prove there’s
no rhinoceros here when you’ve
just brought it in on a plate
of proposed habituated meaning
by opening your mouth and out it pops.
ELEVEN AM
Passionate increase of particulars
failing passage to outside formulae
of permitted significance who cry
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 21
