The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

by Robert Creeley

  FOR CAROLYN KIZER

  Let the dog lie down with the dog,

  people with people.

  It makes a difference where you fit

  and how you feel.

  When young, I was everybody’s human,

  a usual freaked person,

  looking for love in the dark,

  being afraid to turn the lights on.

  It makes a great difference

  to have a friend

  who’s a woman,

  when you’re a so-called man,

  who can talk to you

  across the great divide

  of mixed signals

  and wounded pride.

  Small thanks in the end

  for that maintaining sister,

  but what she says

  is what you remember.

  For Georg

  Art says,

  what are you looking at?

  But the words want

  to say what they have to.

  If there is here

  then there’s here too?

  The grey green monster with

  the ugly face isn’t here,

  the words want to say. But, look,

  says the image, right behind you!

  Anthropomorphic instance in any case

  is a drag. You don’t get reality as choices.

  The battle goes on,

  pens into ploughshares, canvas into awnings—

  or simply faces

  in the crowd. I want

  a lot of things, the

  separables, the x’s and y’s

  of existence. Upside down,

  says Georg, is a whole new ballgame!

  The runner

  advances to second.

  For Gregory Corso

  I’ll miss you,

  who did better than I did

  at keeping the faith of poets,

  staying true.

  It’s as if you couldn’t

  do otherwise,

  had always an appetite

  waiting to lead.

  You kept to the high road

  of canny vision,

  let the rest of us

  find our own provision.

  Ruthless, friends felt,

  you might take everything.

  Nothing was safe from you.

  You did what you wanted.

  Yet, safe in your words, your poems,

  their humor could hold me.

  The wit, the articulate

  gathering rhythms,

  all made a common sense

  of the archaic wonders.

  You pulled from nowhere the kingly chair.

  You sat alone there.

  The Heart

  FOR PEN

  In the construction

  of the chest, there is

  a heart.

  A boat

  upon its blood

  floats past

  and round or down

  the stream of life,

  the plummeting veins

  permit its passage

  to admit no gains,

  no looking back.

  One steps aboard,

  one’s off.

  The ticket taker

  signs the time allotted.

  Seated, amorphous persons

  see no scenery

  but feel

  a chill about their knees

  and hear a fading cry

  as all the many sides of life

  whiz by,

  a blast at best, a loss

  of individual impressions.

  Still I sit

  with you inside me too—

  and us,

  the couple thus encoupled,

  ride on into the sweetening dark.

  Memory

  FOR KEITH AND ROSMARIE

  Remember when

  we all were ten

  and had again

  what’s always been—

  Or if we were,

  no fear was there

  to cause some stir

  or be elsewhere—

  Because it’s when

  all thoughts occur

  to say again

  we’re where we were.

  “If I were writing this . . .”

  If I were writing this

  with prospect of encouragement

  or had I begun some work

  intended to be what it was

  or even then and there it was what

  had been started, even now

  I no longer thought to wait,

  had begun, had found

  myself in the time and place

  writing words which I knew,

  could say ring, dog, hat, car,

  was rushing, it felt, to keep up

  with the trembling impulse,

  the connivance the words contrived

  even themselves to be though

  I wrote them, thought they were me.

  .

  Once in, once out

  Turn’s a roundabout

  Seeing eyes get the nod

  Or dog’s a mistaken god?

  God’s a mistaken dog?

  Gets you home on time

  Rhymes with time on time

  In time for two a “t”

  begins and ends it.

  .

  A blue grey edge.

  Trees line it.

  Green field finds it.

  Eyes look.

  .

  Let the aching heart take over.

  Cry till eyes blur.

  Be as big as you were.

  Stir the pot.

  .

  Whenever it’s sense,

  look for what else is meant

  in the underthought of language.

  Words are apparent.

  Seen light turns off

  to be ambient luminescence,

  there and sufficient.

  No electricians.

  Same sight,

  shadows at edge of light,

  green field again

  where hedgerow finds it.

  Read these words then

  and see the far trees,

  hear the chittering of the birds,

  share my ease and dependence.

  For Kenneth

  It was never a joke.

  Hell’s not its own reward.

  If one even thought of it,

  then there it was.

  But your classic humor

  of the edge, of being about to—

  and hanging on even for one last look—

  that was truly heroic.

  I thought “Sleeping with Women”

  sounded like birds settling

  in some idyllic edge of meadow

  just at night fall.

  So there I held on—put my head

  down on the pillow,

  slept with your words recurring,

  fast in their thought.

  Hiccups

  FOR PHIL

  It all goes round,

  nothing lost, nothing found—

  a common ground.

  Outside is in,

  that’s where it all begins

  and where it seems to end.

  An ample circle

  with center full

  of all that’s in this world—

  or that one—

  or still another someone

  else had thought was fun.

  An echo, a genial emptiness,

  a finally common place, a bliss

  of this and this and this.

  Yesterdays

  Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember

  As time W. C. Williams dies and we are

  Back from a hard two years in Guatemala

  Where the meager provision of being

  Schoolmaster for the kids of the patrones

  Of two coffee plantations has managed

  Neither a life nor money. Leslie dies in

  Horror of bank giving way as she and her

  Si
ster and their friends tunnel in to make

  A cubby. We live in an old cement brick

  Farmhouse already inside the city limits

  Of Albuquerque. Or that has all really

  Happened and we go to Vancouver where,

  Thanks to friends Warren and Ellen Tallman,

  I get a job teaching at the University of British

  Columbia. It’s all a curious dream, a rush

  To get out of the country before the sad

  Invasion of the Bay of Pigs, that bleak use

  Of power. One of my British colleagues

  Has converted the assets of himself and

  His wife to gold bullion and keeps the

  Ingots in a sturdy suitcase pushed under

  Their bed. I love the young, at least I

  Think I do, in their freshness, their attempt

  To find ways into Canada from the western

  Reaches. Otherwise the local country seems

  Like a faded Edwardian sitcom. A stunned

  Stoned woman runs one Saturday night up

  And down the floors of the Hydro Electric

  Building on Pender with the RCMP in hot

  Pursuit where otherwise we stood in long

  Patient lines, extending often several blocks

  Up the street. We were waiting to get our

  Hands stamped and to be given a 12 pack

  Of Molson’s. I think, I dream, I write the

  Final few chapters of The Island, the despairs

  Gathering at the end. I read Richard Brautigan’s

  Trout Fishing in America but am too uptight

  To enjoy his quiet, bright wit. Then that

  Summer there is the great Vancouver Poetry

  Festival, Allen comes back from India, Olson

  From Gloucester, beloved Robert Duncan

  From Stinson Beach. Denise reads “Hypocrite

  Women” to the Burnaby ladies and Gary Snyder,

  Philip Whalen, and Margaret Avison are there

  Too along with a veritable host of the young.

  Then it’s autumn again. I’ve quit my job

  And we head back to Albuquerque

  And I teach again at the university, and

  Sometime just about then I must have

  Seen myself as others see or saw me,

  Even like in a mirror, but could not quite

  Accept either their reassuring friendship

  Or their equally locating anger. Selfish,

  Empty, I kept at it. Thirty-eight years later

  I seem to myself still much the same,

  Even if I am happier, I think, and older.

  Ground Zero

  What’s after or before

  seems a dull locus now

  as if there ever could be more

  or less of what there is,

  a life lived just because

  it is a life if nothing more.

  The street goes by the door

  just like it did before.

  Years after I am dead,

  there will be someone here instead

  perhaps to open it,

  look out to see what’s there—

  even if nothing is,

  or ever was,

  or somehow all got lost.

  Persist, go on, believe.

  Dreams may be all we have,

  whatever one believe

  of worlds wherever they are—

  with people waiting there

  will know us when we come

  when all the strife is over,

  all the sad battles lost or won,

  all turned to dust.

  John’s Song

  FOR JOHN TAGGART

  If ever there is

  if ever, if ever

  there is, if ever there is.

  If ever there is

  other than war, other

  than where war was, if ever there is.

  If ever there is

  no war, no more war, no other than us

  where war was, where it was.

  No more war, dear brother,

  no more, no more war

  if ever there is.

  Emptiness

  FOR HELEN

  The emptiness up the field where

  the barn sits still like an ark, an old

  presence I look up there to see, sun

  setting, sky gone a vivid streaking of

  reds and oranges, a sunset off over the

  skirt of woods where my sister’s barn sits

  up the field with all her determined stuff,

  all she brought and put in it, all her

  pictures, her pots, her particular books

  and icons—so empty, it seems, quickly

  emptied of everything there was in it, like

  herself the last time in the hospital bed had

  been put to face out the big window back of

  tv, so one could look out, see down there,

  over the field, trees of our place, the house,

  woods beyond going off toward Warren, the sight,

  she’d say with such emphasis, I’m where I

  want to be!—could ever Maine be more loved,

  more wanted, all our history trailing back

  through its desperation, our small people, small

  provision, where the poor folk come from like

  us, to Massachusetts, to a world where poverty

  was a class, like Mrs. Peavey told our mother

  she’d never felt poor before, not till she was

  given charity by the women of the Women’s

  Club, her family their annual recipient—empty,

  empty, running on empty, on nothing, on heart,

  on bits and pieces of elegance, on an exquisite frame

  of words, on each and every memory she ever had,

  on the same will as our mother’s, the pinched privacy

  of empty purse, the large show of pleasure, of out there

  everything, come in, come in— she lay there so still,

  she had gone into herself, face gone then but for echo

  of way she had looked, no longer saw or heard, no more

  of any human want, no one wanted. Go away,

  she might have been saying, I’m busy today. Go away.

  Hence then to be cremated, to reach the end and be done.

  Memory

  Somewhere Allen Ginsberg is

  recalling his mother’s dream

  about God, an old man, she says,

  living across the river in

  Palisades, obscure, battered,

  in a shack with hardly any

  provisions. Straight off she asks him,

  how could you let the world get

  into such a mess, and he can

  answer only, I did the best I could.

  She tells Allen he looks neglected

  and there are yellow pee-stains

  on his underpants. Hard to hear

  God could not do any better

  than any of us, just another old

  man sitting on some bench or some

  chair. I remember it was a urologist

  told me how to strip the remaining pee

  from my penis by using my finger’s

  pressure just back of the balls,

  the prostate, then bringing it forward

  so that the last drops of it would go

  into the toilet, not onto my clothes.

  Still it’s of necessity an imperfect

  solution. How stand at a public urinal

  seeming to play with oneself? Yet

  how not—if that’s what it takes not

  to walk out, awkward, wide-legged, damp

  from the crotch down? I cannot

  believe age can be easy for anyone. On

  Golden Pond may be a pleasant picture

  of a lake and that general area of

  New Hampshire, but it’s not true,

  any of it. Please, don’t pu
t, if

  you can help it, your loved ones in

  a care facility, they will only die there.

  Everyone’s sick there. It’s why they’ve come.

  I don’t know now what will or

  may happen to me. I don’t

  feel any longer a simple person with

  a name. I am like a kid at his,

  or her, first day of school. All new,

  all surprising. The teacher with

  her curious large face, the other

  unexpected children, all of us finally

  unsure. The seeming fractures of a self

  grow ominous, like peaks of old

  mountains remembered but faint

  in the obscuring fog. Time to push off, do

  some push-ups perhaps, take a walk with

  the neighbors I haven’t spoken to in years.

  Generous Life

  Do you remember the way we used to sing

  in church when we were young

  and it was fun to bring your toys with you

  and play with them while all the others sung?

  My mind goes on its own particular way

  and leaves my apparent body on its knees

  to get up and walk as far as it can

  if it still wants to and as it still proves able.

  Sit down, says generous life, and stay awhile!

  although it’s irony that sets the table

  and puts the meager food on broken dishes,

  pours out the rancid wine and walks away.

  On Earth

  When I think

  When I think of where I’ve come from

  or even try to measure as any kind of

  distance those places, all the various

  people, and all the ways in which I

  remember them, so that even the skin I

  touched or was myself fact of, inside,

  could see through like a hole in the wall

  or listen to, it must have been, to what

  was going on in there, even if I was still

  too dumb to know anything—When I think

  of the miles and miles of roads, of meals,

  of telephone wires even, or even of water

  poured out in endless streams down streaks

  of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,

  or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it’s spring

  again, or it was—Even when I think again of

  all those I treated so poorly, names, places,

  their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and

  I never came, was never really there at all,

  was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven

  like a car along some empty highway passing,

  passing other cars—When I try to think of