Hid them from sight. So fades at last
Whatever water will know best.
All proof seems pointless in such world,
Seems painful now to bring to mind.
Yet how forget that she once stood
Where now I do in altering time
And saw three mountains and a wood,
And pounding surf far down below
Where, when I look to see in kind
“The three long mountains and a wood,”
They are still there and still the sea
Beats back to me this monody.
For Hannah’s Fourteenth Birthday
What’s heart to say
as days pass,
what’s a mind to know
after all?
What’s it mean to be wise
or right,
if time’s still
insistent master?
But if you doubt the track,
still don’t look back.
Let the love you bring
find its fellow.
Girl to young woman,
world’s well begun.
All comes true
just for you.
Trust heart’s faith
wherever it goes.
It still knows
you follow.
For Will
I was at the door,
still standing as if waiting for more—
but not knowing what for.
Was I with you?
Already we’d come a long distance together.
It was time now for something other.
In my head a story echoed
someone had told me
of how a son and father
came to a like doorway.
Then, in seeming anger, the son dragged the father out,
through an orchard, until the father shouted,
“Only this far I dragged my father! No more!
Put me down . . .” Was this to be their parting,
the last word? Was it only to be gone
each could think of, then, as each other?
All their time together, silent, warm,
knowing without thinking one another’s mind,
no end to such—
could there be?
No, there was no end to it.
Always life was the constant
and one held it, gave it
one to another,
saw it go in that instant,
with love,
with all that one knows.
No riddle to that
except there is no end until it comes,
no friends but those one’s found.
“Wild Nights, Wild Nights”
It seemed your friend
Had finally others to attend.
My time was yours alone to spend.
I leaned against the fence and waited.
Our love, I felt, was unequivocally fated.
To go sans word would leave all still unstated.
Hence scurrying hopes and pledge at last! Now here—
With all the fading years
Between—I wonder where
Time ever was before we
Walked in those towering woods, beneath the ample clouds,
Bathed in that wondrous air!
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer . . .”
FOR ALLEN
A bitter twitter,
flitter,
of birds
in evening’s
settling,
a reckoning
beckoning,
someone’s getting
some sad news,
the birds gone to nest,
to roost
in the darkness,
asking no improvident questions,
none singing,
no hark,
no lark,
nothing in the quiet dark.
Begun with like hypothesis,
arms, head, shoulders,
with body state
better soon than late,
better not wait,
better not be late,
breathe ease,
fall to knees
in posture of compliance,
obeisance,
accommodation
a motivation.
All systems must be imagination
which works,
albeit have quirks.
Add by the one
or by the none,
make it by either
or or.
Or say that after you
I go.
Or say you
follow me.
See what comes after
or before,
what
you had thought.
Many’s a twenty?
A three?
Is twenty-three
plenty?
A call to reason
then
in due season,
a proposal of heaven
at seven
in the evening,
a cup of tea, a sense
of recompense
for anyone works for a living,
getting and giving.
Does it seem mind’s all?
What’s it mean
to be inside
a circle, to fly
in the sky, dear bird?
Words scattered,
tattered,
yet
said
make it
all evident,
manifest.
No contest.
One’s one again.
It’s done.
Hurry on, friend.
There is no end
to desire,
to Blake’s fire,
to Beckett’s mire,
to any such whatever.
Old friend’s dead
in bed.
Old friends die.
Goodbye!
“Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang . . .”
FOR DON
Blunted efforts as the distance
Becomes insistent,
A divided time between now and then,
Between oneself and old friend—
Because what I’d thought age was,
Was a lessening, a fading
Reach to something not clearly seen,
But there still in memory.
No one thought it could be fun.
But—Well begun is half done?
Half gone, then it’s all gone,
All of it over.
Now no one seems there anymore.
Each day, which had been a pleasure,
Becomes a fear someone else is dead,
Someone knocking at the door.
Born very young into a world already very old . . .
Always the same story
And I was told.
So now it’s for me.
Two
En Famille
FOR ELLIE
I wandered lonely as a cloud . . .
I’d seemingly lost the crowd
I’d come with, family—father, mother, sister and brothers—
fact of a common blood.
Now there was no one,
just my face in the mirror, coat on a single hook,
a bed I could make getting out of.
Where had they gone?
.
What was that vague determination
cut off the nurturing relation
with all the density, this given company—
what made one feel such desperation
to get away, get far from home, be gone from those
would know us even if they only saw our noses or our toes,
accept with joy our helpless mess,
taking for granted it was part of us?
.
My friends, hands on each other’s shoulders,
holding on, keeping the pledge
to be for one, for all, a securing center,
no m
atter up or down, or right or left—
to keep the faith, keep happy, keep together,
keep at it, so keep on
despite the fact of necessary drift.
Home might be still the happiest place on earth?
.
You won’t get far by yourself.
It’s dark out there.
There’s a long way to go.
The dog knows.
It’s him loves us most,
or seems to, in dark nights of the soul.
Keep a tight hold.
Steady, we’re not lost.
.
Despite the sad vagaries,
anchored in love, placed in the circle,
young and old, a round—
love’s fact of this bond.
One day one will look back
and think of them—
where they were, now gone—
remember it all.
.
Turning inside as if in dream,
the twisting face I want to be my own,
the people loved and with me still,
I see their painful faith.
Grow, dears, then fly away!
But when the dark comes, then come home.
Light’s in the window, heart stays true.
Call—and I’ll come to you.
.
The wind blows through the shifting trees
outside the window, over the fields below.
Emblems of growth, of older, younger,
of towering size or all the vulnerable hope
as echoes in the image of these three
look out with such reflective pleasure,
so various and close. They stand there,
waiting to hear a music they will know.
.
I like the way you both look out at me.
Somehow it’s sometimes hard to be a human.
Arms and legs get often in the way,
making oneself a bulky, awkward burden.
Tell me your happiness is simply true.
Tell me I can still learn to be like you.
Tell me the truth is what we do.
Tell me that care for one another is the clue.
.
We’re here because there’s nowhere else to go,
we’ve come in faith we learned as with all else.
Someone once told us and so it is we know.
No one is left outside such simple place.
No one’s too late, no one can be too soon.
We comfort one another, making room.
We dream of heaven as a climbing stair.
We look at stars and wonder why and where.
.
Have we told you all you’d thought to know?
Is it really so quickly now the time to go?
Has anything happened you will not forget?
Is where you are enough for all to share?
Is wisdom just an empty word?
Is age a time one might finally well have missed?
Must humanness be its own reward?
Is happiness this?
For You
At the edge, fledgling,
hypocrite reader, mon frère,
mon semblable, there
you are me?
Conversion to Her
Parts of each person,
Lumber of bodies,
Heads and legs
Inside the echoes—
I got here slowly
Coming out of my mother,
Herself in passage
Still wet with echoes—
Little things surrounding,
Little feet, little eyes,
Black particulars,
White disparities—
Who was I then?
What man had entered?
Was my own person
Passing pleasure?
My body shrank,
Breath was constricted,
Head confounded,
Tongue muted.
I wouldn’t know you,
Self in old mirror.
I won’t please you
Crossing over.
Knife cuts through.
Things stick in holes.
Spit covers body.
Head’s left hanging.
Hole is in middle.
Little boy wants one.
Help him sing here
Helpless and wanting.
.
My odor?
My name?
My flesh?
My shame?
My other
than you are,
my way out—
My door shut—
In silence this
happens, in pain.
.
Outside is empty.
Inside is a house
of various size.
Covered with skin
one lives within.
Women are told
to let world unfold.
Men, to take it,
make or break it.
All’s true
except for you.
.
Being human, one wonders at the others,
men with their beards and anger,
women with their friends and pleasure—
and the children they engender together—
until the sky goes suddenly black and a monstrous thing
comes from nowhere upon them
in their secure slumbers, in their righteous undertakings,
shattering thought.
One cannot say, Be as women,
be peaceful, then. The hole from which we came
isn’t metaphysical.
The one to which we go is real.
Surrounding a vast space
seems boundless appetite
in which a man still lives
till he become a woman.
Clemente’s Images
1
Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me
inside this black room,
back of the white moon.
In the dark night
sight frightens me.
2
Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round-headed stare?
Who, perched on the skin,
body’s float, is holding on?
What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?
3
Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,
small guardians of the painful
outside coming in—
in stuck-in vials with needles,
bleeding life in, particular, heedless.
4
Matrix of world
upon a turtle’s broad back,
carried on like that,
eggs as pearls,
flesh and blood and bone
all borne along.
5
I’ll tell you what you want,
to say a word,
to know the letters in yourself,
a skin falls off,
a big eared head appears,
an eye and mouth.
6
Under watery here,
under breath, under duress,
understand a pain
has threaded a needle with a little man—
gone fishing.
And fish appear.
7
If small were big,
if then were now,
if here were there,
if find were found,
if mind were all there was,
would the animals still save us?
8
A head was put
upon the shelf got took
by animal’s hand and stuck
upon a vacant corpse
who, blurred, could nonetheless
not ever be the quietly standing bird it watched.
9
Not lost,
not better or worse,
/> much must of necessity depend on resources,
the pipes and bags brought with us
inside, all the sacks
and how and to what they are or were attached.
10
Everybody’s child
walks the same winding road,
laughs and cries, dies.
That’s “everybody’s child,”
the one who’s in between
the others who have come and gone.
11
Turn as one will, the sky will always be
far up above the place he thinks to dream as earth.
There float the heavenly
archaic persons of primordial birth,
held in the scan of ancient serpent’s tooth,
locked in the mind as when it first began.
12
Inside I am the other of a self,
who feels a presence always close at hand,
one side or the other, knows another one
unlocks the door and quickly enters in.
Either as or, we live a common person.
Two is still one. It cannot live apart.
13
Oh, weep for me—
all from whom life has stolen
hopes of a happiness stored
in gold’s ubiquitous pattern,
in tinkle of commodious, enduring money,
else the bee’s industry in hives of golden honey.
14
He is safely put
in a container, head to foot,
and there, on his upper part, wears still
remnants of a life he lived at will—
but, lower down, he probes at that doubled sack
holds all his random virtues in a mindless fact.
15
The forms wait, swan,
elephant, crab, rabbit, horse, monkey, cow,
squirrel and crocodile. From the one
sits in empty consciousness, all seemingly has come
and now it goes, to regather,
to tell another story to its patient mother.
16
Reflection reforms, each man’s a life,
makes its stumbling way from mother to wife—
cast as a gesture from ignorant flesh,
here writes in fumbling words to touch,
say, how can I be,
when she is all that was ever me?
17
Around and in—
And up and down again,
and far and near–
and here and there,
in the middle is
a great round nothingness.
18
Not metaphoric,
flesh is literal earth
turns to dust
as all the body must,
becomes the ground
wherein the seed’s passed on.
19
Entries, each foot feels its own way,
echoes passage in persons,
holds the body upright,
the secret of thresholds, lintels,
opening body above it,
looks up, looks down, moves forward.
20
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 27
