wasn’t where you said it
would be, where you looked
wasn’t where it was! What
fact of common world is
presumed common? The
objectifying death of all
human person, the ground?
There you are and I look
to see you still, all
the distance still implacable.
The Cup
Who had thought
echo precedent,
shadow the seen
thing, action
reflective—
whose thought was
consequential,
itself an act, a
walking round rim
to see what’s within.
Chain
Had they told you, you
were “four or more cells
joined end to end” the Latin,
catena, “a chain,” the loop,
the running leap to actual
heaven spills at my stunned
feet, pours out the imprisoning
threads of genesis,
oh light beaded necklace,
chain round my neck, my
inexorably bound birth, the sweet
closed curve of fading life?
East Street
Sense of the present
world out window, eye’s
blurred testament
to “St Francis Xavier’s
School,” red brick
and grey cornices,
the snow, day old,
like thin, curdled milk,
God’s will high
above on cross
at church top over
embedded small arches
and close, tiled
roof. The cars
parked, the accelerating
motor of one
goes by, the substantial
old birch, this
closer look—
path Dennis shoveled—
distraction of all report.
Baroque
Would you live your life spectrum
of fly sealed in amber block’s
walk the patient fixed window see
days a measure of tired time a
last minute thought of whatever not
now remembered lift up sit down
then be reminded the dog is your
paradigm seven years to one all
reckoned think out muse on be sud-
denly outside the skin standing
upright pimpled distinction chilled
independence found finally only one?
For Nothing Else
For nothing else,
this for love
for what other
one is this
for love once
was and is
for love,
for love.
Parts
FOR SUSAN ROTHENBERG
HUMAN LEG GOAT LEG
Which the way echoed
previous cloven-hoofed
dark field faint formed
those goat men leading her
in physical earth’s spring
jumps one-legged parallel
long walked thinned out
to sparse grounded skin
bones of what scale say
now goat transforms man
then man goat become
and dances dances?
SNAKE FISH BIRD
Archaic evolving thing
in all surface all beginning
not hair or any seeming simple
extension bring to mind pattern
of woven wetnesses waste a streak
of wonder of evil tokens the underneath
beside ground’s depths spoken
low in sight soundless in height
look past reflection see the light
flash of finned ripple wing
this ancient Fellow follow
to weather, to water, to earth.
HORSE LEG DOG HEAD
Its mute uncute cutoff
inconsequent eye slot
centuries’ habits accumulate
barks the determined dog
beside horse the leg the
walking length the patent
patient slight bent limb
long fetlock faith faint
included instructions placed
aside gone all to vacant
grass placed patiently thus
foot’s function mind’s trust.
DOG LEG WHEEL
Four to the round
repetitive inexorable
sound the wheel the whine
the wishes of dogs
that the world be real
that masters feel
that bones be found
somewhere in the black ground
in front or in back
before and behind
hub for a head bark’s
a long way back. And on
GOAT’S EYE
Eye hole’s peculiar framed
see you, want you, think
of eye out, lost last sight,
past goat thoughts, what
was it, when or why—
Or if still the stiff
hair, musk, the way
eye looks out, black
line contracted, head’s skull
unstudied, steady,
it led to lust, follows
its own way down to dust.
DOG HEAD WITH RABBIT LEG
Break the elliptical
make the face deadpan tell
nothing to it smile for the
camera lie down and roll over
be in complex pieces for once
you ran the good race broke
down and what’s left you
least of all can understand.
It was cold. It was hard.
Dogs barked. Rabbits ran.
It comes to such end,
friend. Such is being dead.
DOG HEAD WITH CRESCENT MOON
Harvested this head’s
a manifest of place the
firmament’s fundament.
Overhead sky’s black night
in lieu of echoed moon
seems sounding out
a crescent crescendo
for a dog’s life.
Barked bones soft
mouth’s brought home
the arc again the light.
Waits patient for reward.
BIRD AND CALF
Peculiar patience is death
like an envelope a flap
a postulate you’d left a
space where it was and it
has gathered the outside
of its body in or just
flopped down dropped all
alternative forever waiting
for the plummeting streak
gets closer closer and
the god who cleans up things
puts death to work.
HORSES’ BREATH
Had never known blue air’s
faded fascination had never
seen or went anywhere never
was a horse unridden but on
one proverbial frosty morning
whilst going to the kitchen
I thought of our lives’ opaque
addiction to distances to
all the endless riders etched
on those faint horizons and
nuzzled the mere idea of you—
swapped breath. Oh love, be true!
Two
White Fence/White Fence
(FOR PAUL STRAND’S PHOTOGRAPH “WHITE FENCE”)
Particularizing “White
Fence” beyond which
the seeming
echoes of barn, house,
bright light flat
on foursquare
far building while
in closer view shades
darken the faint ground.
Yet fence as
>
image or word,
white or black, or
where place the person,
the absent,
in this ring of focus?
I come closer, see
in there the
wistful security,
all in apparent place,
the resonant design, diamond,
the dark/light,
the way all plays to pattern,
the longed for world
of common facts.
Then this fence again,
as if pasted on,
pushes out and across,
a static, determined
progress of detailing
edges, American, an
odd reason so forced
to be seen. It
cannot accommodate,
cannot let get past,
unaffected, any, must be
“White Fence.”
East Street Again
FOR CARL RAKOSI
The tree stands clear in the weather
by the telephone pole, its stiff brother.
Hard to think which is the better,
given living is what we’re here for
and that one’s soon dead no matter.
Neither people nor trees live forever.
But it’s a dumb thought, lacking other.
Only this passing faint snow now for tether—
mind’s deadness, emptiness for pleasure—
if such a flat, faint echo can be measure.
So much is forgotten no matter.
You do what you can do, no better.
Sonnets
FOR KEITH AND ROSMARIE
Come round again the banal
belligerence almost a
flatulent echo of times
when still young the Sino
etc conflict starvation lists
of people without work or place
world so opaque and desperate
no one wanted even to
go outside to play even
with Harry Buddy who hit
me who I hit stood slugging
while they egged us on.
.
While ignorant armies clash
bash while on the motorway
traffic backed up while they
stand screaming at each other
while they have superior
armaments so wage just
war while it all provokes
excuses alternatives money
time wasted go tell it
on the town dump deadend
avoidance of all you might
have lived with once.
.
Someone told me to stand
up to whoever pushed me
down when talking walking
hand on friend’s simple
pleasures thus abound when
one has fun with one
another said surrogate
God and planted lettuce
asparagus had horses cows
the farm down the road
the ground I grew up
on unwon unending.
.
I’d take all the learned
manner of rational un-
derstanding away leave
the table to stand on
its own legs the plates
to stick there the food
for who wants it the places
obvious and ample and
even in mind think it
could be other than an
argument a twisting
away tormented unless.
.
Me is finally unable having
as all seem to ended with
lost chances happily enough
missed the boat took them
all to hell on a whim
went over whatever precipice
but no luck just stupid
preoccupation common
fear of being overly hurt
by the brutal exigencies were
what pushed and pulled
me too to common cause.
.
So being old and wise and
unwanted left over from
teeth wearing hands wearing
feet wearing head wearing
clothes I put on take now
off and sleep or not or sit
this afternoon morning night
time’s patterns look up at
stars overhead there what
do they mean but how useless
all violence how far away you
are from what you want.
.
Some people you just
know and recognize,
whether a need or fact,
a disposition at that
moment is placed,
you’re home, a light
is in that simple
window forever— As if
people had otherwise always
to be introduced, told
you’re ok— But here
you’re home, so longed
for, so curiously
without question found.
Other
Having begun in thought there
in that factual embodied wonder
what was lost in the emptied lovers
patience and mind I first felt there
wondered again and again what for
myself so meager and finally singular
despite all issued therefrom whether
sister or mother or brother and father
come to love’s emptied place too late
to feel it again see again first there
all the peculiar wet tenderness the care
of her for whom to be other was first fate.
Body
Slope of it,
hope of it—
echoes faded,
what waited
up late inside
old desires
saw through
the screwed importunities.
This regret?
Nothing’s left.
Skin’s old,
story’s told—
but still touch,
selfed body,
wants other,
another mother
to him, her
insistent “sin”
he lets in
to hold him.
Selfish bastard,
headless catastrophe.
Sans tits, cunt,
wholly blunt—
fucked it up,
roof top, loving cup,
sweatered room,
old love’s tune.
Age dies old,
both men and women cold,
hold at last no one,
die alone.
Body lasts forever,
pointless conduit,
floods in its fever,
so issues others parturient.
Through legs wide,
from common hole site,
aching information’s dumb tide
rides to the far side.
“You Were Never Lovelier . . .”
FOR CLETUS
Inside that insistence—
small recompense— Persistence—
No sense in witless
thoughtlessness, no one
has aptitude for waiting—
hating, staying away later,
alone, left over, saw
them all going
without her (him), wanted
one for him (her)self, left
on the shelf, “them” become
fact of final indifference—
The theme is thoughtlessness,
the mind’s openness, the
head’s large holes, the gaps
in apparent thinking. So that
amorphic trucks drive through
you, mere, mired, if unmoved,
agency, left by the proposed “they”
to stay, alone of all that was.
The world is, or
seems, entirely
an aggression, a running over, an
impossible conjunct of misfits
crash about, hurting one another.
No names please, no no one or someone.
Say goodbye to the nonexistent—never
having lived again or ever, mindless—
trucks, holes, clouds, call them—
those sounds of shapes in tides of space—
pillaging weather, shifting about one
or two or simply several again, an issue
only of surmise, a surprise of
sunset or sunrise, a day or two can’t
think about or move out, or be again certain,
be about one’s own business, be vanity’s own simpleton,
simply, You Were Never Lovelier . . .
Reflection
It must be low key
breeze blowing through
room’s emptiness is
something to think of—
but not enough
punch, pain enough,
despair to make
all else fade out—
This morning, that
morning? Another ample
day in the diminishing
possibility, the
reflective reality
alters to place
in specific place
what can’t get past.
The Old Days
Implicit echo of the
seemingly friendly
face and grace as well
to be still said. Go to hell
(or heaven), old American
saying— My sister’s friends
are affectionate people,
and also seemingly real.
Can I calculate—as to say,
can I still stay up late
enough to catch Santa Claus or
New Year’s, are the small, still
tenets of truth still observable—
And how is your mother? Dead, sir,
these less than twenty years.
The voice echoes the way it was—
And if I am mistaken, sir.
If I am thought in error, was the error
intentional, did I mean to confuse you.
Were the great waves of myriad voices too
much of enough— You remember Cocteau’s A little
too much is enough for me— Tits were beautiful—
bubbles of unstable flesh, pure, tilting pleasure.
You cannot finally abjure beauty
nor can you simply live without it—
reflective, beating your meat, unspeakable,
light headed with loneliness. Oh to be old
enough, fall down the stairs, break everything—
One often did but in such company
was heaven— Breath, arms, eyes,
and consummate softness— Breathing softness,
moist, simply conjoining softness, like a pillow.
No man is an island, no woman a pillow—
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 19