The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

  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