Robert Creeley

As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,—John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going.

for Anselm Hollo Go out into brightened space out there the fainter yellowish place it makes for eye to enter out to greyed penumbra all the way to thoughtful searching sight of all beyond that solid red both brick and seeming metal roof or higher black beyond the genial slope I look at daily house top on my own way up to heaven. * Same roof, light’s gone down back of it, behind the crying end of day, “I need something to do,” it’s been again those other things, what’s out there, sodden edge of sea’s bay, city’s graveyard, park deserted, flattened aspect, leaves gone colored fall to sidewalk, street, the end of all these days but still this regal light. * Trees stripped, rather shed of leaves, the black solid trunks up to fibrous mesh of smaller branches, it is weather’s window, weather’s particular echo, here as if this place had been once, now vacant, a door that had had hinges swung in air’s peculiar emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere, asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of linearly absolute black metal fence. * Old sky freshened with cloud bulk slides over frame of window the shadings of softened greys a light of air up out of this dense high structured enclosure of buildings top or pushed up flat of bricked roof frame I love I love the safety of small world this door frame back of me the panes of simple glass yet airy up sweep of birch trees sit in flat below all designation declaration here as clouds move so simply away. * Windows now lit close out the upper dark the night’s a face three eyes far fainter than the day all faced with light inside the room makes eye re- flective see the common world as one again no outside coming in no more than walls and post- card pictures place faces across that cautious dark the tree no longer seen more than black edge close branches somehow still between. * He was at the edge of this reflective echo the words blown back in air a bubble of suddenly apparent person who walked to sit down by the familiar brook and thought about his fading life all “fading life” in tremulous airy perspect saw it hover in the surface of that moving darkness at the edge of sun’s passing water’s sudden depth his own hands’ knotted surface the sounding in himself of some other. * One forty five afternoon red car parked left hand side of street no distinguishing feature still wet day a bicycle across the way a green door- way with arched upper window a backyard edge of back wall to enclosed alley low down small windows and two other cars green and blue parked too and miles and more miles still to go. * This early still sunless morning when a chair’s creak translates to cat’s cry a blackness still out the window might be apparent night when the house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of immense empty silence and I feel the children still breathing still shifting their dreams an enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un- known placed out there in night I can feel all about me still sitting in this small spare pool of light watching the letters the words try to speak. * Classic emptiness it sits out there edge of hierarchic roof top it marks with acid fine edge of apparent difference it is there here here that sky so up and out and where it wants to be no birds no other thing can for a moment distract it be beyond its simple space.

loop Down the road Up the hill Into the house Over the wall Under the bed After the fact By the way Out of the woods Behind the times In front of the door Between the lines Along the path echo In the way it was in the street it was in the back it was in the house it was in the room it was in the dark it was fat fate Be at That this Come as If when Stay or Soon then Ever happen It will look Particular pleasures weather measures or Dimestore delights faced with such sights. here Outstretched innocence Implacable distance Lend me a hand See if it reaches time Of right Of wrong Of up Of down Of who Of how Of when Of one Of then Of if Of in Of out Of feel Of friend Of it Of now moral Now the inevitable As in tales of woe The inexorable toll It takes, it takes. eat Head on backwards Face front neck’s Pivot bunched flesh Drops jowled brunch. toffee Little bit patted pulled Stretched set let cool. case Whenas To for If where From in Past place Stated want Gain granted Planned or have a heart Have heart Find head Feel pattern Be wed Smell water See sand Oh boy Ain’t life grand oh oh Now and then Here and there Everywhere On and on winter Season’s upon us Weather alarms us Snow riot peace Leaves struck fist. duty Let little Linda allow litigation Foster faith’s fantasy famously And answer all apt allegations Handmake Harold’s homework handsomely gotcha Passion’s particulars Steamy hands Unwashed warmth One night stands west acton summer Cat’s rats, Mother’s brother Vacation’s patience, loud clouds Fields far, seize trees School’s rules, friends tend Lawn’s form, barn’s beams Hay’s daze, swallows follow Sun’s sunk, moon mends Echo’s ending, begin again far “Far be it from Harry to alter the sense of drama inherent in the almighty tuxedo ...” “Far be it from Harry” Sit next to Mary, See how the Other Follows your Mother pat’s Pat’s place Pattern’s face Aberrant fact Changes that four’s Four’s forms Back and forth Feel way Hindside Paper route Final chute sentences Indefatigably alert when hit still hurt. Whenever he significantly alters he falters. Wondrous weather murmured mother. Unforgettable twist in all such synthesis. Impeccably particular you always were. Laboriously enfeebled he still loved people. words Driving to the expected Place in mind in Place of mind in Driving to the expected here You have to reach Out more it’s Farther away from You it’s here data Exoneration’s face Echoed distaste Privileged repetition Makeshift’s decision— • Now and then Behind time’s Emptied scene and Memory’s mistakes— • You are here And there too Being but one Of you— scatter All that’s left of coherence. echo again Statement keep talking Train round bend over river into distance door Everything’s before you were here. summer ’38 Nubble’s Light a sort of bump I thought— a round insistent small place not like this— it was a bluff, tip on the edge of the sea. air Lift up so you’re Floating out Of your skin at The edge but Mostly up seeming Free of the ground. echoes Think of the Dance you could do One legged man Two legged woman. there Hard to be unaddressed— Empty to reflection— Take the road east— Be where it is. echoes Sunrise always first— That light—is it Round the earth—what Simple mindedness. star Where It is There You are • Out there In here Now it is Was also • Up where It will be And down Again • No one Point To it Ever

I dreamt last night the fright was over, that the dust came, and then water, and women and men, together again, and all was quiet in the dim moon’s light. A paean of such patience— laughing, laughing at me, and the days extend over the earth’s great cover, grass, trees, and flower- ing season, for no clear reason.

for Bobbie Yesterday I wanted to speak of it, that sense above the others to me important because all that I know derives from what it teaches me. Today, what is it that is finally so helpless, different, despairs of its own statement, wants to turn away, endlessly to turn away. If the moon did not ... no, if you did not I wouldn’t either, but what would I not do, what prevention, what thing so quickly stopped. That is love yesterday or tomorrow, not now. Can I eat what you give me. I have not earned it. Must I think of everything as earned. Now love also becomes a reward so remote from me I have only made it with my mind. Here is tedium, despair, a painful sense of isolation and whimsical if pompous self-regard. But that image is only of the mind’s vague structure, vague to me because it is my own. Love, what do I think to say. I cannot say it. What have you become to ask, what have I made you into, companion, good company, crossed legs with skirt, or soft body under the bones of the bed. Nothing says anything but that which it wishes would come true, fears what else might happen in some other place, some other time not this one. A voice in my place, an echo of that only in yours. Let me stumble into not the confession but the obsession I begin with now. For you also (also) some time beyond place, or place beyond time, no mind left to say anything at all, that face gone, now. Into the company of love it all returns.

When I know what people think of me I am plunged into my loneliness.  The grey hat bought earlier sickens. I have no purpose no longer distinguishable. A feeling like being choked enters my throat.

for Robert Duncan It is hard going to the door cut so small in the wall where the vision which echoes loneliness brings a scent of wild flowers in a wood. What I understood, I understand. My mind is sometime torment, sometimes good and filled with livelihood, and feels the ground. But I see the door, and knew the wall, and wanted the wood, and would get there if I could with my feet and hands and mind. Lady, do not banish me for digressions. My nature is a quagmire of unresolved confessions. Lady, I follow. I walked away from myself, I left the room, I found the garden, I knew the woman in it, together we lay down. Dead night remembers. In December we change, not multiplied but dispersed, sneaked out of childhood, the ritual of dismemberment. Mighty magic is a mother, in her there is another issue of fixture, repeated form, the race renewal, the charge of the command. The garden echoes across the room. It is fixed in the wall like a mirror that faces a window behind you and reflects the shadows. May I go now? Am I allowed to bow myself down in the ridiculous posture of renewal, of the insistence of which I am the virtue? Nothing for You is untoward. Inside You would also be tall, more tall, more beautiful. Come toward me from the wall, I want to be with You. So I screamed to You, who hears as the wind, and changes multiply, invariably, changes in the mind. Running to the door, I ran down as a clock runs down. Walked backwards, stumbled, sat down hard on the floor near the wall. Where were You. How absurd, how vicious. There is nothing to do but get up. My knees were iron, I rusted in worship, of You. For that one sings, one writes the spring poem, one goes on walking. The Lady has always moved to the next town and you stumble on after Her. The door in the wall leads to the garden where in the sunlight sit the Graces in long Victorian dresses, of which my grandmother had spoken. History sings in their faces. They are young, they are obtainable, and you follow after them also in the service of God and Truth. But the Lady is indefinable, she will be the door in the wall to the garden in sunlight. I will go on talking forever. I will never get there. Oh Lady, remember me who in Your service grows older not wiser, no more than before. How can I die alone. Where will I be then who am now alone, what groans so pathetically in this room where I am alone? I will go to the garden. I will be a romantic. I will sell myself in hell, in heaven also I will be. In my mind I see the door, I see the sunlight before me across the floor beckon to me, as the Lady’s skirt moves small beyond it.

Creo que si ... I believe it will rain tomorrow ...

He comes here by whatever way he can, not too late, not too soon. He sits, waiting. He doesn’t know why he should have such a patience. He sits at a table on a chair. He is comfortable sitting there. No one else in this room, no others, no expectations, no sounds. Had he walked another way, would he be here, like they say.