Breath as a braid, a tugging
squared circle, “steam, vapour—
an odorous exhalation,”
breaks the heart when it
stops. It is the living, the
moment, sound’s curious
complement to breadth,
brethren, “akin to BREED . . .”
And what see, feel, know as
“the air inhaled and exhaled
in respiration,” in substantial
particulars—as a horse?
.
Not language paints,
pants, patient, a pattern.
A horse (here horses) is
seen. Archaic in fact,
the word alone
presumes a world,
comes willy-nilly thus back
to where it had all begun.
These horses are, they reflect
on us, their seeming ease
a gift to all that lives,
and looks and breathes.
Four Days in Vermont
Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face
a single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off
another larger contorts to swell growing in around
imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs
hold to one two three four five six dry twisted
yellowish brown leaves flat against the other
grey trees in back stick upright then the glimpse
of lighter still greyish sky behind the close
welted solid large trunk with clumps of grey-green
lichen seen in boxed glass squared window back
of two shaded lamps on brown chiffonier between
two beds echo in mirror on far wall of small room.
.
(FOR MAGGIE)
Most, death left a hole
a place where she’d been
An emptiness stays
no matter what or who
No law of account not
There but for the
grace of God go I
Pain simply of want
last empty goodbye
Put hand on her head
good dog, good dog
feel her gone.
.
Tree adamant looks in
its own skin mottled with growths
its stubborn limbs
stick upright parallel
wanting to begin again
looking for sun in the sky
for a warmer wind
to walk off pull up
roots and move
to Boston be a table
a chair a house
a use a final fire.
.
What is truth firm (as a tree)
Your faith your trust your loyalty
Agrees with the facts makes
world consistent plights a troth
is friendly sits in the common term
All down the years all seasons all sounds
all persons saying things conforms confirms
Contrasts with “war equals confusion” (worse)
But Dichtung und Wahrheit? “Wahr-” is
very (“Verily I say unto you . . .”) A compact now
Tree lights with the morning though truth be an oak
This is a maple, is a tree, as a very truth firm.
.
Do I rootless shift
call on the phone
daughter’s warm voice
her mother’s clear place
Is there wonder here
has it all gone inside
myself become subject
weather surrounds
Do I dare go out
be myself specific
be as the tree
seems to look in.
.
Breeze at the window
lifts the light curtains
Through the dark a light
across the faint space
Warmth out of season
fresh wash of ground
out there beyond
sits here waiting
For whatever time comes
herein welcome
Wants still
truth of the matter.
.
Neighbor’s light’s still on
outside above stoop
Sky’s patchy breaks
of cloud and light
Around is a valley
over the hill
to the wide flat river
the low mountains secure
Who comes here with you
sits down in the room
what have you left
what’s now to do.
.
Soon going day wanders on
and still tree’s out there waiting
patient in time like a river and
truth a simple apple reddened
by frost and sun is found
where one had left it in time’s company
No one’s absent in mind None gone
Tell me the truth I want to say
Tell me all you know Will we live
or die As if the world were apart
and whatever tree seen were only here apparent
Answers, live and die. Believe.
The Dogs of Auckland
1
Curious, coming again here,
where I hadn’t known where I was ever,
following lead of provident strangers,
around the corners, out to the edges,
never really looking back but kept
adamant forward disposition, a Christian
self-evident resolve, small balloon of purpose
across the wide ocean, friends, relations,
all left behind. Each day the sun rose, then set.
It must be the way life is, like they say, a story
someone might have told me. I’d have listened.
Like the story Murray recalled by Janet Frame
in which a person thinks to determine what’s most necessary
to life, and strips away legs, arms, trunk—
to be left with a head, more specifically, a brain,
puts it on the table, and a cleaning woman comes in,
sees the mess and throws it into the dustbin.
Don’t think of it, just remember? Just then there was a gorgeous
light on the street there, where I was standing, waiting
for the #005 bus at the end of Queen Street, just there on Customs,
West—dazzling sun, through rain. “George is/gorgeous/
George is . . .” So it begins.
2
Almost twenty years ago I fled my apparent life, went off
into the vast Pacific, though it was only miles and miles
in a plane, came down in Auckland Airport, was met by Russell Haley—
and he’s still here with Jean, though they’ve moved
to the east coast a few hours away, and Alan Loney is here
as ever my friend. And Wystan, whose light I might see there
across the bay, blinking. And Alistair Paterson is here with a thirty-
four-foot boat up the harbor—as in comes the crew of Black Magic
with the America’s Cup, in their yellow slickers, the cars moving down
Queen Street, the crowd there waiting some half million—
in the same dazzling light in which I see tiny, seemingly dancing ‹figures
at the roof’s edge of the large building back of the square, looking ‹down.
How to stay real in such echoes? How be, finally, anywhere the body’s ‹got to?
You were with friends, sir? Do you know their address . . .
They walk so fast through Albert Park. Is it my heart causes these
awkward, gasping convulsions? I can mask the grimace with a smile,
can match the grimace with a smile. I can. I think I can.
Flooded with flat, unyielding sun, the winter beds of small plants
form a
pattern, if one looks, a design. There is Queen Victoria still,
and not far from her the statue of a man. Sit down, sit down.
3 (for Pen)
Scale’s intimate. From the frame and panes of the fresh white
painted windows in the door, to the deck, second floor, with its
white posts and securing lattice of bars, but nothing, nothing that
would ever look like that, just a small porch, below’s the garden,
winter sodden, trampoline, dark wet green pad pulled tight, a lemon
tree thick with fruit. And fences, backyards, neighbors surrounding, in
all the sloping, flattened valley with trees stuck in like a kid’s picture,
palms, Norfolk pine, stubby ones I can’t name, a church spire, brownish
red at the edge of the far hill, also another prominent bald small dome,
both of which catch the late sun and glow there near the head of ‹Ponsonby Road.
The Yellow Bus stops up the street, where Wharf comes into Jervois Road,
off Buller to Bayfield, where we are. I am writing this, sitting at the table,
and love you more and more. When you hadn’t yet got here, I set to ‹each morning
to learn “New Zealand” (I thought) as if it were a book simply. I listened ‹to everyone.
Now we go to bed as all, first Will and Hannah, in this rented house, ‹then us,
lie side by side, reading. Then off with the light and to sleep, to slide ‹close up
to one another, sometimes your bottom tucked tight against my belly or
mine lodged snug in your lap. Sweet dreams, dear heart, till the ‹morning comes.
4
Back again, still new, from the south
where it’s cold now, and people didn’t seem to
know what to do, cars sliding, roads blocked with snow,
walk along here through the freshening morning
down the wet street past green plastic garbage bins,
past persistent small flowering bushes, trees. Like the newcomer
come to town, the dogs bark and one on a porch
across from the house where we live makes a fuss
when I turn to go in through the gate. Its young slight
mistress comes out as if in dream, scolds the sad dog,
cuffing it with shadowy hands, then goes back in.
I wonder where sounds go after they’ve been,
where light once here is now, what, like the joke,
is bigger than life and blue all over, or brown all over,
here where I am. How big my feet seem, how curiously
solid my body. Turning in bed at night with you gone, alone here,
looking out at the greyish dark, I wonder who else is alive.
Now our bus lumbers on up the hill from the stop at the foot of Queen ‹Street—
another late rain, a thick sky— past the laboring traffic when just across
at an intersection there’s another bus going by, its windows
papered with dogs, pictures of dogs, all sizes, kinds and colors,
looking real, patient like passengers, who must be behind
sitting down in the seats. Stupid to ask what things mean if it’s only
to doubt them. That was a bus going elsewhere? Ask them.
5
Raining again. Moments ago the sky was a grey lapping pattern
towards the light at the edges still, over Auckland, at the horizon.
It’s closed in except for the outline of a darker small cloud
with pleasant, almost lacelike design laid over the lighter sky.
Things to do today. Think of Ted Berrigan, friends absent or dead.
Someone was saying, you don’t really know where you are
till you move away— “How is it far if you think it.” I have still the sense
I’ve got this body to take care of, a thing someone left me in mind
as it were. Don’t forget it. The dogs were there when I went
up to the head of the street to shop for something to eat and a lady,
unaggressively but particular to get there, pushes in to pay for some ‹small items
she’s got, saying she wants to get back to her house before the rain.
The sky is pitch-black toward the creek. She’s there as I pass with my ‹packages,
she’s stopped to peer into some lot has a board enclosure around it,
and there are two dogs playing, bouncing up on each other.
Should I bounce, then, in friendship, against this inquisitive lady,
bark, be playful? One has no real words for that.
Pointless otherwise to say anything she was so absorbed.
6
I can’t call across it, see it as a piece, am dulled with its reflective ‹prospect,
want all of it but can’t get it, even a little piece here. Hence the dogs,
“The Dogs of Auckland,” who were there first walking along with their ‹company,
seemed specific to given streets, led the way, accustomed.
Nothing to do with sheep or herding, no presence other than one ‹cannily human,
a scale kept the city particular and usefully in proportion.
When I was a kid I remember lifting my foot up carefully, so as to step ‹over
the castle we’d built with blocks. The world here is similar. The sky so ‹vast,
so endless the surrounding ocean. No one could swim it.
It’s a basic company we’ve come to.
They say people get to look like their dogs, and if I could,
I’d have been Maggie, thin long nose, yellowish orange hair,
a frenetic mongrel terrier’s delight in keeping it going, eager,
vulnerable, but she’s gone. All the familiar stories of the old man
and his constant companion, the dog, Bowser.
My pride that Norman Mailer lists Bob, Son of Battle
as a book he valued in youth
as I had also. Warm small proud lonely world.
Coming first into this house, from seemingly nowhere
a large brown amiable dog went bounding in
up the steps in front of us, plunged through various rooms
and out. Farther up the street is one less secure, misshapen,
a bit thin-haired where it’s worn, twists on his legs, quite small.
This afternoon I thought he’d come out to greet me, coming home.
He was at the curb as I came down and was headed toward me.
Then he got spooked and barked, running, tail down, for his house.
I could hear all the others, back of the doors, howling,
sounding the painful alarm.
7
Empty, vacant. Not the outside but in. What you thought was
a place, you’d determined by talk,
and, turning, neither dogs nor people
were there. Pack up the backdrop. Pull down
the staging. Not “The Dogs” but The Dog of Auckland—
Le Chien d’Auckland, c’est moi!
I am the one with the missing head in the gully
Will saw, walking up the tidal creekbed. I am the one
in the story the friend told, of his Newfoundland,
hit by car at Auckland city intersection, crossing on crosswalk,
knocked down first, then run over, the driver
anxious for repairs to his car. I am the Dog.
Open the sky, let the light back in.
Your ridiculous, pinched faces confound me.
Your meaty privilege, lack of distinguishing measure,
skill, your terrifying, mawkish dependence—
You thought for even one moment it was Your World?
Anubis kills!
8
“Anubis” rhymes with Auckland, says the thoughtful humanist—
at least an “a” begins each word, and from there on it’s
only a
matter of miles. By now I have certainly noticed
that the dogs aren’t necessarily with the people at all, nor are the people
with the dogs. It’s the light,
backlit buildings, the huge sense of floating,
platforms of glass like the face
of the one at the edge of Albert Park
reflects (back) the trees, for that charmed
moment all in air. That’s where we are.
So how did the dogs get up here, eh?
I didn’t even bring myself, much less them.
In the South Island a bull terrier is minding sheep
with characteristic pancake-flat smile.
Meantime thanks, even if now much too late,
to all who move about “down on all fours”
in furry, various coats. Yours was the kind accommodation,
the unobtrusive company, or else the simple valediction of a look.
Edges
Expectably slowed yet unthinking
of outside when in, or weather
as ever more than there when
everything, anything, will be again
Particular, located, familiar in its presence
and reassuring. The end
of the seeming dream was simply
a walk down from the house through the field.
I had entered the edges, static,
had been walking without attention,
thinking of what I had seen, whatever,
a flotsam of recollections, passive reflection.
My own battered body, clamorous
to roll in the grass, sky looming,
the myriad smells ecstatic, felt insistent prick of things
under its weight, wanted something
Beyond the easy, commodious adjustment
to determining thought, the loss of reasons
to ever do otherwise than comply—
tedious, destructive interiors of mind
As whatever came in to be seen,
representative, inexorably chosen,
then left as some judgment.
Here thought had its plan.
Is it only in dreams
can begin the somnambulistic rapture?
Without apparent eyes?
Just simply looking?
All these things were out there
waiting, innumerable, patient.
How could I name even one enough,
call it only a flower or a distance?
If ever, just one moment, a place
I could be in where all imagination would fade
to a center, wondrous, beyond any way
one had come there, any sense,
And the far-off edges of usual
place were inside. Not even the shimmering
reflections, not one even transient ring
come into a thoughtless mind.
Would it be wrong to say, the sky is up,
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 24
