the ground is down, and out there
is what can never be the same—
what, like music, has gone?
Trees stay outside one’s thought.
The water stays stable in its shifting.
The road from here to there continues.
One is included.
Here it all is then—
as if expected,
waited for and found
again.
Won’t It Be Fine?
At whatever age he was, he was apt with that
“not with a bang but a whimper . . .” Wiseass little
prick felt himself thus projected an impervious
balloon into history. Or maybe not at all so,
just spooked he had blown it again or been blown
out by old-time time’s indifference to anything
wouldn’t fit the so-called pattern. I am tired, I am
increasingly crippled by my own body’s real wear
and tear, and lend my mind to an obsessional search for
les images des jeunes filles or again not so
young at all with huge tits, or come-hither looks,
or whatever my failing head now projects as desirable.
What was I looking at sunk once full weight onto others,
some of whom I hardly knew or even wanted to, mean
-minded bastard that I was and must perforce continue
to be. God help us all who have such fathers, or lovers,
as I feel myself to have been, be, and think to spend
quiet evenings at home while he (me), or they, plural,
pad the feral passages, still in their bedroom slippers,
never dressing anymore but peering out, distracted,
for the mailman, the fellow with the packages, the persons
having the wrong address, or even an unexpected friend appearing.
“No, I never go out anymore, having all I need right here”—
and looks at his wife, children, the dog, as if they were only
a defense. Because where he has been and is cannot admit them.
He has made a tediously contrived “thing to do today” with
his own thing, short of cutting it off. There is no hope in hope,
friends. If you have friends, be sure you are good to them.
Signs
1
The old ones say, “The peach keeps its fuzz until it dies.” It seemed for years as if one would never grow up, never be the first to say anything. But time is like a river, rather, a dank, sluggish rush, and here one is at last as anticipated old on its nether bank. I stand there bewildered, in my pajamas, shouting, “The stone is an apple before it’s got hard!” The ground is the bottom of the sky.
2
It begins with I stand there. The old ones say, “The speech keeps its fizz until it dries.” For years and years one never grew up, never first or last. But was like a river rather, a dark whoosh, and there was at last one old anticipated on the dark bank. I stands there in my pajamas. Shouts, apple stone hard’s got! Hands wrought, God’s bought— Bodies! The sky is ground at the bottom.
3
The. Bod. Ies. Han. Ds. God. S. Bough. T.
(Ic. An. Read.) Ston. Es. St. And. Sh. Out. T. Here.
Sky. See. Is. At. T. He. Har. Ds.
It was no friend of mine they shot they caught no friend of mine they sought they thought they fought. Alone on the far bank old now to be there he ought not . . .
Ought not.
Got. Bot. (Of) Tom. The Sky. (Of) God. The Eye.
Bot. Tom. Each. Sp. Eech. P. Each. Lies lie.
4
I cannot tell the truth anymore. I am too old to remember by what right or wrong one was then to be the measure, so as to think that if this, of two, might be down, then that, of one, would be up. The birds make the lovely music just outside the opened windows as we lie there on the freshly made beds in the attractive chambres des dispossessed. Or maid or made. Make Mary dirty man! This is Hull nor are you out of it, saith.
5
“He ate the Hull thing.” I lied when I told you I was lying. Clean sheets for dirty bodies, God’s dotties, odd’s potties. Where’s the far bank on the corner of. Neither lip’s invitation. I can’t see the water for the sky. Each year’s a peach, hard, and no friend. Bought or sought or fought or caught. What ever happened to rabbits? Did we finally eat them all?
Sieh’ D’ Rahm!
I need some “water” at this point
where “sky” meets “ground”
— to lead one reader on,
and so a wandering mind anoint . . .
6
Watery disposition. Spongy, rubbery surfaces. Sinking ground. Nowhere one sensible, solid support. Looks up from within the well’s depth. Looks out from the edge of the prospect. Down, in. Up, out. Light. Dark. I remember we were sitting on the rock in the clearing. We were standing by the dock near the mooring. Lock of door shutting. Clock’s ticking. Walks thinking. Thinner than one was. Aging beginner, sinner. Talks.
7
You have never had chance to speak of how particularly love mattered in your life, nor of the many ways it so invaded you, chafed, rubbed, itched, “grew wet with desire,” long, soft, hard, etc. You were observant of cares in such matters, bulks of person, legs, arms, heads, etc. It’s hard to budge the real if it’s not your own. Born very young into a world already very old . . . Even spitting it out was often awkward. Seemingly unseemly, uncertain. Curtain. Hide it from view, then, until they’ve all gone.
8
What was it friend said? “We are the old ones now!” But that was years ago. Sitting right there where you are. I was. He is. Time’s like a rover we’ll go no more of. Apple’s at bottom of bushel turned to stone. But I am tired of apples speaking now . . . Peaches. Faded speeches. Fuzz turned to screaming sirens and old dead men. Dank river darkened in dusk of dead ends. Hits bottom.
Echo’s Arrow
FOR JACKSON MAC LOW
Were there answers where they were
There where air was everywhere
Time to make impassioned stir
Place to find an answer for
Place to find an answer for
Time to make impassioned stir
There where air was everywhere
Were there answers where they were
Old Poems
One wishes the herd still wound its way
to mark the end of the departing day
or that the road were a ribbon of moonlight
tossed between something cloudy (?) or that the night
were still something to be walked in like a lake
or that even a bleak stair down which the blind
were driven might still prove someone’s fate—
and pain and love as always still unkind.
My shedding body, skin soft as a much worn
leather glove, head empty as an emptied winter pond,
collapsing arms, hands looking like stubble, rubble,
outside still those barns of my various childhood,
the people I still hold to, mother, my grandfather,
grandmother, my sister, the frames of necessary love,
the ones defined me, told me who I was or what I am
and must now learn to let go of, give entirely away.
There cannot be less of me than there was,
not less of things I’d thought to save, or forgot,
placed in something I lost, or ran after,
saw disappear down a road itself is no longer there.
Pump on, old heart. Stay put, vainglorious blood,
red as the something something.
“Evening comes and comes . . .” What
was that great poem about the man against
the sky just at the top of the hill
with the last of the vivid sun still behind him
and one couldn’t tell
whether he now went up or down?
>
Mitch
Mitch was a classmate
later married extraordinary poet
and so our families were friends
when we were all young
and lived in New York, New Hampshire, France.
He had eyes with whites
above eyeballs looked out
over lids in droll surmise—
“gone under earth’s lid” was Pound’s phrase,
cancered stomach?
A whispered information over phone,
two friends the past week . . . ,
the one, she says, an eccentric dear woman,
conflicted with son?
Convicted with ground
tossed in, one supposes,
more dead than alive.
Life’s done all it could
for all of them.
Time to be gone?
Not since 1944–45
have I felt so dumbly, utterly,
in the wrong place at
entirely the wrong time,
caught then in that merciless war,
now trapped here, old, on a blossoming earth,
nose filled with burgeoning odors,
wind a caress, sound blurred reassurance,
echo of others, the lovely compacting
human warmths, the eye closing upon you,
seeing eye, sight’s companion, dark or light,
makes out of its lonely distortions
it’s you again, coming closer, feel
weight in the bed beside me,
close to my bones.
They told me it would be
like this but who could
believe it, not to leave, not to
go away? “I’ll hate to
leave this earthly paradise . . .”
There’s no time like the present,
no time in the present. Now it floats, goes out like a boat
upon the sea. Can’t we see,
can’t we now be company
to that one of us
has to go? Hold my hand, dear.
I should have hugged him,
taken him up, held him,
in my arms. I should
have let him know I was here.
Is it my turn now,
who’s to say or wants to?
You’re not sick, there are
certainly those older.
Your time will come.
In God’s hands it’s cold.
In the universe it’s an empty, echoing silence.
Only us to make sounds,
but I made none.
I sat there like a stone.
Three
LIFE & DEATH
THERE
INSIDE MY HEAD
Life & Death
“IF I HAD THOUGHT . . .”
If I had thought
one moment
to reorganize life
as a particular pattern,
to outwit distance, depth,
felt dark was myself
and looked for the hand
held out to me, I
presumed. It grew by itself.
.
It had seemed diligence,
a kind of determined
sincerity, just to keep going,
mattered, people would care
you were there.
I hadn’t thought of death—
or anything that happened
simply because it happened.
There was no reason there.
“OH MY GOD . . .”
Oh my god— You
are a funny face
and your smile
thoughtful, your teeth
sharp— The agonies
of simple existence
lifted me up. But
the mirror I looked in
now looks back.
.
It wasn’t God
but something else
was at the end,
I thought, would
get you like
my grandpa dead
in coffin
was gone forever,
so they said.
“OUT HERE . . .”
Out here there
is a soundless float
and the earth
seems far below—
or out. The stars
and the planets
glow on the wall.
Inside each one
we fuck, we fuck.
.
But I didn’t mean to,
I didn’t dare to look.
The first time couldn’t
even find the hole
it was supposed to go in—
Lonely down here
in simple skin,
lonely, lonely
without you.
“SEAR AT THE CENTER . . .”
Sear at the center,
convoluted, tough passage,
history’s knots,
the solid earth—
What streaked
consciousness, faint
design so secured
semen’s spasm,
made them?
.
I didn’t know then,
had only an avarice
to tear open
love and eat its person,
feeling confusion,
driven, wanting
inclusion, hunger
to feel, smell, taste
her flesh.
“IN THE DIAMOND . . .”
In the diamond
above earth,
over the vast, inchoate,
boiling material
plunging up, cresting
as a forming cup, on the truncated
legs of a man stretched out,
the hub of penis alert,
once again the story’s told.
.
Born very young into a world
already very old, Zukofsky’d said.
I heard the jokes
the men told
down by the river, swimming.
What are you
supposed to do
and how do you learn.
I feel the same way now.
“THE LONG ROAD . . .”
The long road of it all
is an echo,
a sound like an image
expanding, frames growing
one after one in ascending
or descending order, all
of us a rising, falling
thought, an explosion
of emptiness soon forgotten.
.
As a kid I wondered
where do they go,
my father dead. The place
had a faded dustiness
despite the woods and all.
We all grew up.
I see our faces
in old school pictures.
Where are we now?
“WHEN IT COMES . . .”
When it comes,
it loses edge,
has nothing around it,
no place now present
but impulse not one’s own,
and so empties into a river
which will flow on
into a white cloud
and be gone.
.
Not me’s going!
I’ll hang on till
last wisp of mind’s
an echo, face shreds
and moldering hands,
and all of whatever
it was can’t say
any more to
anyone.
There
Then when those shades so far from us had run
That they could now be seen no more, arose
A new thought in me and then another one,
And many and divers others sprang from those,
And I so wandered in and out of them
That all the wandering made mine eyes to close,
And thinking was transmuted into dream.
–DAN
TE, PURGATORIO
THERE
The wall is at
What I never said
the beginning faint
what I couldn’t touch
faces between thin
was me in you
edges of skin
you in me
an aching determination
dumb sad pain
inside and out
wasted blame
thought
the edge I battered
feeling
trying to get in
of places things
away from myself
they are in or are
locked in doubt
between all this
only myself
and that too again.
trying still to get out.
FEARFUL LOVE
Love was my heart
No one cares
in the pit
even feels
in the dark
the stares
was my fear
the evil
in the coil
I screamed to myself
of the near
turned into picture
of another where
saw only myself
a congress of birds
in the sullen mirror
waited to hear
had become one of them
what a gun could say
fixed in a form
to a simple world what the white
abstract dead
faced one now would say.
out of my head.
LOOP
I left it behind
Only me
in the dark
like they say
for others to find
no one more
as they came in
than another
two and two
if there
the doubles of desire
it’s enough
their bodies’ architecture
inside flesh
myself still inside
I could be
singing small grey bird
more than reflection
caught by design
fixed as an echo
upright cock breast
be myself more
hips the rope’s loop.
like passage like door.
HAND
This way to end
Comes too close
an outstretched hand
to me frightens
reaches forward to find
stuns what I feel
place for itself
argues existence
fingers grown large
makes me confused
in eye’s disposition
makes pattern of place
opaque dark
textures of patience
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 25