.
RED
When it goes
that fast
you don’t see anything
but speed, you see
red.
.
I got something stuck
in my hand.
It was a splinter.
.
In the first World War
they had bombs
that looked like this.
.
How fast
do you think it’s going?
.
SNOWMAN
Help the holes
be bigger. Put
your hand
in.
.
He grew a
point on
top
of his head—
two
of them.
.
That ice
cream cone’ll
drip?
.
Curious
key hole.
.
I want to go into the immense
blue yonder
and I’ve built a negative number
times three.
.
WINGS
Those are hills out there
or mounds
Or breasts filling
the horizon.
.
It’s a bird! Such
grace.
.
Sitting here
in Maine
I put you on the window sill
against the blue, white
yellow sky. You’re a
sea gull suddenly.
What else
do I want.
.
Miles away they
are waiting for the promised
land again and the wind
has moved
the sand
into these shapes.
.
BOX
What do you think
he’s got it for
unless
he means to use it.
.
No way
that could fit
(me)
.
“The worms
crawl in. The”
.
People walked
through the town carrying
coffins!
.
a coffin
fit . . .
Heh,
heh.
.
Just stand him up
in the corner.
.
BOAT
Rock me, boat.
Open, open.
Hold me,
little cupped hand.
Let me come in,
come on
board you, sail
off, sail off . . .
H’s
Have Hannah’s happy health—
have whatever, be
here, hombre . . . Her
hands upon edge
of table, her eyes
as dark centers, her
two teeth—but all,
her climbing, sacklike,
limp, her hands out-
stretched, or simply out
to it, her coming here,
her, all of her, her
words of her, Hannah,
Hannie, Good girl,
good. So we go
on with it. So is
Hannah
in this world.
After Frost
FOR SHERMAN PAUL
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.
Black Grackle
FOR STAN AND JANE
Black grackle’s refreshing eyeblink
at kitchen sink’s
wedged window—
a long way to go after all,
a long way back to the crack
in some specific wall
let the light in, so
to speak—Let the bird speak,
squeak prettily, and sit
on my finger, pecking ring’s blue
stone. Home, home all around here,
geese peer in, goats graze, I suppose
they eat, want no
arbitrary company nor summary
investigation pretends in any way
so to know them—and give milk.
Youth has its own rewards,
and miles to go before I sleep
is echo of miles and miles,
wherever, whatever it was—
I wanted you and you
sat down to stay awhile.
If all there was was such
one pulled the threads and all
fell out, if going there was only
coming here with times between
and everyday a holiday with Mary
and I love you still and always will,
then then could not begin again
its busyness, its casual consequences,
and no head on no shoulders, no
eyes or ears, etc., nothing forward
in this peculiarly precious instance
scrunched down here, screaming—ultimate me—
for miles and miles around
its devastating sound.
The Seasons
FOR JASPER JOHNS
“Therefore all seasons will be sweet to thee . . .”
–S. T. COLERIDGE, “FROST AT MIDNIGHT”
Was it thunk suck
of sound an insistent
outside into the patience
abstract waited was lost
in such simple flesh où
sont les mother and
father so tall the green
hills echoéd and light
was longer, longer, into
the sun, all the small
body bent at last to
double back into one
and one and one wonder,
paramour pleasure.
.
High air’s lightness heat
haze grasshopper’s chirr
sun’s up hum two close
wet sweat time’s hung in space
dust deep greens a wave of grasses
smells grow faint sounds echo
the hill again up and down
we go—
summer, summer, and not even
the full of it . . .
Echoes again body’s time a
ticking a faint insistent
intimate skin wants weather
to reassure.
.
All grown large world
round ripeness is all
an orange pumpkin harsh
edge now of frost an
autumnal moon over the
far off field leads back
to the house all’s dead
silence the peculiarly
constructed one you were
all by yourself Shine on
Hear the walls of fall
The dark flutes of autumn
sound softly . . . Oh love,
love, remember me.
.
As if because or
whenever it was it was
there again muffled mute
an extraordinary quiet
white and cold far off
hung in the air without
apparent edge or end
nowhere one was or if
then gone waited
come full circle again
deep and t
hick and even
again and again
having thought to go nowhere
had got there.
.
The seasons, tallies of earth,
keep count of time,
say what it’s worth.
Sight
Eye’s reach out window water’s
lateral quiet bulk of trees at
far edge now if peace were
possible here it would enter.
.
Bulk of trees’ tops mass of
substantial trunks supporting from
shifting green base lawn variable
greens and almost yellow looks like.
.
Seven grey metal canoes drawn
up and tethered by pond’s long
side with brushy green bushes and
metallic light sheen of water at evening.
.
What see what look for what
seems to be there front of the fore-
head the echoing painful minded-
ness of life will not see this here.
Four
DREAMS
Dreams
What you think you
eat at some table like
a pig with people
you don’t even
know and lady there
feeds you all and you,
finally you at least
are full, say, look at
them still eating! Why
(says a woman, another
sitting next to me) those
others still eating you
so cannily observed are
unlike you who could be fed
because you were hungry! But
them, they can’t—they
are possessed by the
idea of hunger, never enough
to eat for them, agh . . .
Or you either, dreamer,
who tells this simple
story being all these
same offensive persons
in one empty head.
.
In dreams begin the
particulars of those
echoes and edges,
the quaint ledges of
specific childhood nailed
to my knees and
leaning in unison
while the other
men went off, the
women working, the
kids at baleful
play, mud-colored
with rocks and stones and
trees years ago in
Albuquerque, New Mexico we’d
stopped the night I dreamt
I was to be child forever
on way to get the kids from camp.
.
Have you ever
had vision as if
you were walking
forward to some
edge of water through
the trees, some country
sunlit lane, some
place was just ahead
and opening as your body
elsewise came
and you had
been in two places?
For the World That Exists
No safer place to live than with children
for the world that exists.
If
Up the edge of the window out to
tree’s overhanging branches sky
light on facing building up to
faint wash blue up on feet ache
now old toes wornout joints make
the wings of an angel so I’d fly.
Lights
I could get
all of it.
I could say
anything.
I wish I could
just get even.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
When did
it happen.
Where was
everyone.
I wish I could
just get even.
Now you’ve
gone away.
Nobody
wants to stay.
Here I am.
Here I am.
I Dreamt
I dreamt I dwelt in a big building—
four walls, floor and a ceiling,
bars in front and behind.
Nothing on my mind.
I dreamt I dwelt in a can,
round, tin, sides, top and bottom,
and I couldn’t get out.
Nobody to get me out.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
a men’s room with a trough
you pissed in, and there I was.
There were a lot of us.
I dreamt I dwelt in a house,
a home, a heap of living
people, dogs, cats, flowers.
It went on for hours.
Whatever you dream is true.
It’s just you making it up,
having nothing better to do.
Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.
Sparks Street Echo
Flakes falling
out window make
no place, no place—
no faces, traces,
wastes of whatever
wanted to be—
was here
momently, mother,
was here.
You
You were leaving, going
out the door in
preoccupation as to
what purpose it
had served, what
the point was, even
who or what or where,
when you thought you
could, suddenly, say
you understood, and
saw all people as if
at some distance, a
pathetic, vast huddle
up against a fence.
You were by no means
the Cosmic Farmer
nor Great Eyeball in Sky.
You were tired, old now,
confused as to purpose,
even finally alone.
You walked slowly
away or rather got in
the car was waiting
with the others.
How to say clearly what
we think so matters
is bullshit, how all the
seeming difference is none?
Would they listen, presuming
such a they? Is any-
one ever home to such in-
sistences? How ring
the communal bell?
All was seen in
a common mirror, all
was simple self-
reflection. It was me
and I was you.
Focus
Patches of grey
sky tree’s
lines window
frames the
plant hangs
in middle.
Plague
When the world has become a pestilence,
a sullen, inexplicable contagion,
when men, women, children
die in no sense realized, in
no time for anything, a
painful rush inward, isolate—
as when in my childhood the
lonely leper pariahs so seemingly
distant were just down the street,
back of drawn shades, closed doors—
no one talked to them, no one
held them anymore, no one waited
for the next thing to happen—as
we think now the day begins
again, as we look for the faint sun,
as they are still there, we hope, and we are coming.
Age
Most explicit—
the sense of trap
as a narrowing
cone one’s got
stuck into and
any movement
forward simply
wedges one more—
but where
or quite when,
even w
ith whom,
since now there is no one
quite with you— Quite? Quiet?
English expression: Quait?
Language of singular
impedance? A dance? An
involuntary gesture to
others not there? What’s
wrong here? How
reach out to the
other side all
others live on as
now you see the
two doctors, behind
you, in mind’s eye,
probe into your anus,
or ass, or bottom,
behind you, the roto-
rooter-like device
sees all up, concludes
“like a worn out inner tube,”
“old,” prose prolapsed, person’s
problems won’t do, must
cut into, cut out . . .
The world is a round but
diminishing ball, a spherical
ice cube, a dusty
joke, a fading,
faint echo of its
former self but remembers,
sometimes, its past, sees
friends, places, reflections,
talks to itself in a fond,
judgmental murmur,
alone at last.
I stood so close
to you I could have
reached out and
touched you just
as you turned
over and began to
snore not unattractively,
no, never less than
attractively, my love,
my love—but in this
curiously glowing dark, this
finite emptiness, you, you, you
are crucial, hear the
whimpering back of
the talk, the approaching
fears when I may
cease to be me, all
lost or rather lumped
here in a retrograded,
dislocating, imploding
self, a uselessness
talks, even if finally to no one,
talks and talks.
Funny
Why isn’t it funny when you die,
at least lapse back into archaic pattern,
not the peculiar holding on to container
all other worlds were thought to be in—
archaic, curious ghost story then,
all sitting in the familiar circle,
the light fading out at the edges,
and voices one thinks are calling.
You watch them go first, one by one,
you hold on to the small, familiar places,
you love intently, wistfully, now
all that you’ve been given.
But you can’t be done with it
and you’re by no means alone.
You’re waiting, watching them go,
know there’s an end to it.
Five
EIGHT PLUS
Improvisations
FOR LISE HOSHOUR
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 15