The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley
Page 23
My car is parked in the driveway.
My door is locked. I do not want
to go outside.
.
What was resistance.
How come to this.
Wasn’t body’s package
obvious limit,
could I fly,
could I settle,
could I even
be I . . .
And for what want,
watching man die
on tv in Holland, wife
sitting by.
She said, “He’s
going off alone
for the first time
in our lives.”
He told her,
“to the stars, to the
Milky Way,”
relaxed, and was gone.
What is Florida
to me or me
to Florida except
so defined.
.
You’ve left a lot out
Being in doubt
you left
it out
Your mother
Aunt Bernice
in Nokomis
to the west
and south (?)
in trailer park
Dead now for years
as one says
You’ve left
them out
David
your son
Your friend
John
You’ve left
them out
You thought
you were writing
about
what you felt
You’ve left it out
Your love
your life
your home
your wife
You’ve
left her
out
No one is one
No one’s alone
No world’s that small
No life
You left it out
.
The shell was the apparent
inclusion, that another might be here.
Form, the provision,
what one took, or didn’t,
from another. What form
did it take,
what way
did it matter?
My mind was a supermarket
or a fading neighborhood store.
I couldn’t find anything anymore,
or just didn’t have it.
I is another . . .
and another, another,
blocks fading, streets
fading, into an emptying distance.
Who tore it down.
Where was it, what
was it. Where do you think
you left it?
My mother in Nokomis,
Aunt Bernice in Nokomis,
David in Sarasota,
Mary Ann, Cecelia, Rebecca
in Sarasota, John in
Sarasota, or Long Island,
Pen, Will and Hannah,
Helen, in Buffalo—
how use them simply as loci,
points of reference,
who made me substance?
Sarah calls to say she is pregnant
and that is a delicious sound—
like the music Caliban hears
sometimes in Prospero’s cell
surrounding him.
.
Rise into the air and look down
and see it there, the pendant form of it,
the way it goes out, alone, into an ocean,
the end of a pattern suddenly extended
to cover, in itself, the western reach, the gulf close beyond.
Its fragile surfaces are watery, swamps to the south,
to the north where its population gathers in flat cities,
sandy wastes, oaks, palmetto, laurel, pine and (for me)
an unidentified particularity more seen, felt, than known.
Perhaps the whole place is a giant pier out
into nothing, or into all that is other, all else.
Miles and miles of space are here in unexpected senses,
sky washed with clouds, changing light, long sunsets
sinking across water and land, air that freshens, intimate.
Endless things growing, all horizontal, an edge, a rise only of feet
above the sea’s surface, or the lakes, the ponds, the rivers,
all out, nothing that isn’t vulnerable, no depths, no rooted senses
other than the actual fabric of roots, skin of survivals.
.
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
In Florida I placed a jar
And round it was, upon a hill . . .
And all around it grew important air
. . . And tall and of a port in air.
It was my first time there
It took dominion everywhere.
and I was far from home and scared
The jar was gray and bare.
in Florida, like nothing else
. . . Like nothing else in Tennessee.
In Florida. Like nothing else.
Two
OLD POEMS, ETC.
Echo
of the nameless
breather”— The brother,
sister, of the faceless
now adamant body, all
still unsaid, unfledged,
unrecognized until
death all so sudden
comes for the people
and we are one
in this covenant, all the nameless,
those still breathing,
all brothers, sisters,
mothers, fathers,
just a piece of the real,
the fading action, one after one
this indifferent, inexorable, bitter
affliction strikes down—
Credo
Creo que si . . . I believe
it will rain
tomorrow . . . I believe
the son of a bitch
is going into the river . . .
I believe All men are
created equal—By your
leave a leafy
shelter over the exposed
person— I’m a
believer creature
of habit but without
out there a void of
pattern older
older the broken
pieces no longer
salvageable bits
but incommensurate
chips yet must
get it back together.
In God we
trust emptiness privilege
will not not perish
perish from this earth—
In particular echo
of inside pushes
at edges all these years
collapse in slow motion.
The will to believe,
the will to be good,
the will to want
a way out—
Humanness, like
you, man. Us—pun
for once beyond reflective
mirror of brightening prospect?
I believe what it was
was a hope it could be
somehow what it was
and would so continue.
A plank to walk out on,
fair enough. Jump! said the pirate.
Believe me if all
those endearing young charms . . .
Here, as opposed to there,
even in confusions there seems
still a comfort,
still a faith.
I’d as lief
not leave, not
go away, not
not believe.
I believe in belief . . .
All said, whatever I can think of
comes from there,
goes there.
As it gets now impossible
to say, it’s your hand
I hold to, still
your hand.
A Feeling
&nbs
p; However far
I’d gone,
it was still
where it had all begun.
What stayed
was a feeling of difference,
the imagination
of adamant distance.
Some time,
place,
some other way it was,
the turned face
one loved,
remembered,
had looked for
wherever,
it was all now
outside
and in
was oneself again
except there too
seemed nowhere,
no air,
nothing left clear.
Silence
I can’t speak so
simply of whatever
was then
the fashion
of silence
everyone’s— Blue
expansive morning
and in
the lilac bush just
under window
farm house
spaces all
the teeming chatter
of innumerable birds—
I’d lie quiet
trying
to go to sleep late
evenings in summer
such buzzes settling
twitters
of birds— The relatives
in rooms underneath
me murmuring—
Listened hard to catch
faint edges of sounds
through blurs of a fading
spectrum now out
there forever.
Old Story
Like kid on float
of ice block sinking
in pond the field had made
from winter’s melting snow
so wisdom accumulated
to disintegrate
in conduits of brain
in neural circuits faded
while gloomy muscles shrank
mind padded the paths
its thought had wrought
its habits had created
till like kid afloat
on ice block broken
on or inside the thing it stood
or was forsaken.
Given
Can you recall
distances, odors,
how far from the one
to the other, stalls
for the cows,
the hummocks one jumped to,
the lawn’s webs,
touch, taste of specific
doughnuts, cookies,
what a pimple was
and all such way
one’s skin was a place—
Touch, term, turn of curious fate.
Who can throw a ball,
who draw a face,
who knows how.
The Mirror
Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,
these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,
our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.
Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.
Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.
Pictures
The little bed
they put me in
with the grim pictures
facing in
The freak of death
for one so young
The fear of cuts
blood leaking out
The sudden abandon
of pleasure, summer
The seasons
The friends
One fall evening driving
in car with teacher
fellow student girl
sitting beside me
on way back from
first play seen
in Boston “Macbeth”
Why did they kill them
Why was my body
flooded
with tension
my small cock stiff
Loops
The other who I’d be
never the same as me
no way to step outside and see
more than some penitence of memory—
As day fades to the dust-filled light
in the window in the back wall beyond sight
where I can feel the coming night
like an old friend who sets all to rights—
In the constrictions of this determined scribble
despite slipping thought’s wobble
the painful echoing senses of trouble
I’ve caused others and cannot end now—
Boxed in a life too late to know other
if there was ever any other
but fact of a lost tether
kept the other still somehow there—
To try now to say goodbye
as if one could try to die
in some peculiar mind
wanted to step outside itself for a last try—
To be oneself once and for all
to look through the window and see the wall
and want no more
of anything at all beyond.
Thinking
Grandmother I’d thought
to have called all together
night before dying
in the bed at the stairs’ top
when I’d walked
with blackened sky
overhead the storm
and the lightning flashing
back past the Montagues
from the ice pond
and rotting icehouse
held the common pigeons
wanting all to go forward as ever
with grandmother
confidently ill I thought
giving last orders to us all
my mother the elder,
thus to take care
of sister Bernice and younger brother—
did she say as I thought,
I’m tired now
and roll over—
Was it book I’d read
said death’s so determined—
whilst grandma crying
out to us
to come and help her
shook, coughed and died?
Goodbye
Now I recognize
it was always me
like a camera
set to expose
itself to a picture
or a pipe
through which the water
might run
or a chicken
dead for dinner
or a plan
inside the head
of a dead man.
Nothing so wrong
when one considered
how it all began.
It was Zukofsky’s
Born very young into a world
already very old . . .
The century was well along
when I came in
and now that it’s ending,
I realize it won’t
be long.
But couldn’t it all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother’d say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,
did right always have to be so wrong?
I know this body is impatient.
I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.
Yet I loved, I love.
I want no sentimentality.
I want no more than home.
“Present (Present) . . .”
“What is Williams’ (Raymond’s) tome . . .”
Where have all the flowers gone?
I put them right here on the table . . .
No one’s been here but for Mabel.
God, my mind is slipping cogs,
gaps of pattern, mucho fog . . .
Yet I know whatever I
can ever think of ere I die,
’twill be in my head alone
to make no “we” unless “they” tell “us”
“you” is “me” and “I” is nameless.
“Tom” is wrong? “I” is right?
Is this the point at which “we” fight?
Us was never happy we,
all that’s ever left is me.
Past is what I can’t forget,
where the flowers got to yet—
Mabel’s face, my mother’s hands,
clouds o’erhead last year at Cannes,
Kenneth Koch’s reaction when
we told him once at 3 AM
he should marry Barbara Epstein,
loosen up and have some fun.
“I remember. I remember—”
Memory, the great pretender,
says it happened, thinks it was,
this way, that way, just because
it was in my head today . . .
Present (present) passed away.
Help
Who said you didn’t want
to keep what you’ve got
and would help the other guy
share the bulging pot
of goodies you got
just by being bought
on time by the plot
wouldn’t give you a dime
sick or not
you’ve got to stay well
if you want to buy time
for a piece of the lot
where you all can hang out
when you aren’t sick in bed
blood running out
bones broken down
eyes going blind
ears stuffed up
stomach a bloat
you battered old goat
but nothing to keep up
no payments to make
no insurance is fine
when you plan to die
when you don’t mind the wait
if you can’t stand up
and all the others are busy
still making money.
A Valentine for Pen
I love you, says the clock, paradoxically silent, watching
through the night with red eyes. I love you, says the long
wooden table across from the wide bed with the bookcase
upright beside it, the black lamp arching over, the old computer
waiting for its work. I love you, I love you, the echoes, reaches
of the tall room, the hanging pictures, the catalogs, clothes, the
cats securely sleeping on the disheveled old couch, the pulled up
small rug put over its cushions, all say it, the enclosing dear room,
the balcony above which opens at each end to bedrooms of the
children, I love you, says Hannah’s ample particular heart, says
Will’s wide responsive heart, says each resonance of every sweet
morning’s opening, here said, again and again, I love you.
Breath
FOR SUSAN ROTHENBERG