Necessity, the mother of invention,
father of intention,
sister to brother to sister, to innumerable others,
all one as the time comes,
death’s appointment,
in the echoing head, in the breaking heart.
21
In self one’s place defined,
in heart the other find.
In mind discover I,
in body find the sky.
Sleep in the dream as one,
wake to the others there found.
22
Emptying out
each complicating part,
each little twist of mind inside,
each clenched fist,
each locked, particularizing thought,
forgotten, emptying out.
23
What did it feel like
to be one at a time—
to be caught in a mind
in the body you’d found
in yourself alone—
in each other one?
24
Broken hearts, a curious round of echoes—
and there behind them the old garden
with its faded, familiar flowers,
where all was seemingly laced together—
a trueness of true,
a blueness of blue.
25
The truth is in a container
of no size or situation.
It has nothing
inside
Worship—
Warship. Sail away.
As If
As if a feeling, come from nought,
Suspended time in fascinated concentration,
So that all the world therein became
Of that necessity its own reward—
I lifted to mind a piece
Of bright blue air and then another.
Then clouds in fluffy substance floated by.
Below I felt a lake of azure waited.
I cried, Here, here I am—the only place I’ll ever be . . .
Whether it made a common sense or found a world,
Years flood their gate, the company dispersed.
This person still is me.
Possibilities
FOR SUSAN ROTHENBERG
What do you wear?
How does it feel
to wear clothes?
What shows
what you were or where?
This accident, accidental, person,
feeling out, feelings out—
outside the box one’s in—
skin’s resonances, reticent romances,
the blotch of recognition, blush?
It’s a place one’s going,
going out to, could reach
out just so far to be at the edge
of it all, there, no longer inside,
waiting, expectant, a confused thing.
One wanted skin to walk in,
be in. One wanted each leg to stand,
both hands to have substance,
both eyes to look out, recognize,
all of it, closer and closer.
Put it somewhere, one says.
Put it down. But it’s not a thing
simply. It’s all of it here,
all of it near and dear,
everywhere one is, this and that.
Inside, it could have been included.
There was room for the world.
One could think of it, even be simple, ample.
But not “multitudes,” not that way in—
It’s out, out, one’s going. Loosed.
Still—wistful in heaven, happy in hell?
Sky was an adamant wall,
earth a compact of dirty places,
faces of people one used to know.
Air—smell, sound and taste—was still wonderful.
One dreamed of a thoughtless moment,
the street rushing forward, heads up.
One willed almost a wave of silence
to hear the voices underneath.
Each layer, each particular, recalled.
But now to be here?
Putting my hand on the table,
I watch it turn into wood,
Fibrous, veins like wood’s grain,
But not that way separated—all one.
I felt a peace come back.
No longer needed to say what it was,
nothing left somehow to name only—
still was each each, all all,
evident mass, bulky sum, a complex accumulation?
My mother dying sat up, ecstatic,
coming out of the anesthetic, said,
“It’s all free! You don’t have to pay
for any of it . . .” It’s there
if you can still get to it?
Come closer, closer. Come as near
as you can get. Let me know
each edge, each shelf of act,
all the myriad colors, all the shimmering presences,
each breath, finger of odor, echoed pin drop.
Adumbrate nature. Walk a given path.
You are as much its fact as any other.
You stand a scale far smaller than a tree’s.
A mountain makes you literal as a pebble.
Look hard for what it is you want to see.
The sky seems in its heavens, laced with cloud.
The horizon’s miles and miles within one’s sight.
Cooling, earth gathers in for night.
Birds quiet, stars start out in the dark.
Wind drops. Thus life itself can settle.
Nothing’s apart from all and seeing is
the obvious beginning of an act
can only bring one closer to the art
of being closer. So feeling all there is,
one’s hands and heart grow full.
For Anya
An “outside” was always what I wanted
to get to, the proverbial opening
in the clearing, plain church with massed,
seated persons, the bright water
dense with white caps and happy children.
Was I late, stupid, to arrive always
as It’s me!—somehow still alone,
however I’d thought myself present,
muted the persistent self-concerns,
took requisite chances, trying to let go?
Evening’s clouds seem a dynasty,
an end forever to such confusion.
Birds sing still at the edges of hearing.
Night settles itself comfortably
far—and once and for all—beyond me.
I think and therefore I am self-conscious.
There are no mirrors here to look into,
No answering reassurances one’s sufficient.
The “outside” is empty but vast, I think.
It’s everywhere around me and still there.
There (1)
I left the wagon far too soon—
too particular, too big
or small for my britches.
I got off too early,
was too impatient to get there
and didn’t even know where I was going.
I wouldn’t let the company
count me in, take me with them,
even to a clearly pleasant place.
One by one was for me a confusion.
It was one period
I wanted—just me, just you—no more.
How does one get back on, brother?
Wherever you’re going is fine with me.
Anything I’ve got is yours and always was.
There (2)
FOR DOUG MESSERLI
Well if ever,
Then when never—
House’s round,
Sound’s sound.
Here’s where
Comes there
If you do,
They will too.
Three
Thinking
FOR ALEX
; Thought feels the edges.
Just so far it was only yesterday?
So far it seems now till tomorrow.
Time isn’t space.
Away for the day, one says—
gone fishing. Now and again.
The sounds echo in the quiet morning—
such faint edges of place, things, not yet quite seen.
But one knows the familiar presences.
The world will be as one left it,
still there, to reappear again perhaps
where it always is.
Cambridge, Mass 1944
Sister remembers
night she’d come down
to meet me in town
my friends then told her
I’d jumped in the river
and hadn’t returned.
—But once in the water
I’d kept on swimming
across to far shore
where police fished me out
and put me in jail
where I stayed the night
naked in cell
so clothes could dry out.
Next morning the judge
gave me dime to get home.
Place to Be
Days the weather sits
in the endless sky,
the clouds drifting by.
The winter’s snow,
summer’s heat,
same street.
Nothing changes
but the faces, the people,
all the things they do
’spite of heaven and hell
or city hall—
Nothing’s wiser than a moment.
No one’s chance
is simply changed by wishing,
right or wrong.
What you do is how you get along.
What you did is all it ever means.
Pictures
FOR PEN
1
This distance
between pane of glass,
eye’s sight—
the far waving green edge
of trees, sun’s
reflection, light
yellow—and sky there too
light blue.
2
I will sit here
till breeze, ambient,
enfolds me and I
lift away. I will
sit here as sun
warms my hands, my
body eases, and sounds
grow soft and intimate
in my ears. I will sit
here and the back of the house
behind me will at last
disappear. I will sit here.
3
Harry’s gone out for pizza.
Mabel’s home all alone.
Mother just left for Ibiza.
Give the old man a bone?
Remember when Barkis was willing?
When onions grew on the lawn?
When airplanes cost just a shilling?
Where have the good times gone?
4
If one look back
or thinks to look
in that uselessly opaque direction,
little enough’s ever there.
What is it one stares into,
thinks still to recover
as it all fades out—
mind’s vagary?
I call to you brutally.
I remember the day we met
I remember how you sat, impatient
to get out.
Back is no direction . . .
Tout passe?
Life is the river
we’ve carried with us.
5
Sun’s shadows aslant
across opening expansive
various green fields down
from door
here ajar on box tower’s
third floor—
look out on
wonder.
This morning.
6
I never met you afterward
nor seemingly knew you before.
Our lives were interfolded,
wrapped like a present.
The odors, the tastes, the surfaces
of our bodies were the map—
the mind a distraction,
trying to keep up.
I could not compare you to anything.
You were not like rhubarb
or clean sheets—or, dear as it might be,
sudden rain in the street.
All those years ago, on the beach in Dover,
with that time so ominous,
and the couple so human,
pledging their faith to one another,
now again such a time seems here—
not to fear
death or what’s been so given—
to yield one’s own despair.
7
Like sitting in back seat,
can’t see what street
we’re on or what the
one driving sees
or where we’re going.
Waiting for what’s to happen,
can’t quite hear the conversation,
the big people, sitting up front.
8
Death, be not proud . . .
Days be not done.
Air be not gone.
Head be not cowed.
Bird be not dead.
Thoughts be not fled.
Come back instead,
Heart’s hopeful wedding.
Face faint in mirror.
Why does it stay there?
What’s become
Of person who was here?
9
Wet
water
warm
fire.
Rough
wood
cold
stone.
Hot
coals
shining
star.
Physical hill still my will.
Mind’s ambience alters all.
10
As I rode out one morning
just at break of day
a pain came upon me
unexpectedly—
As I thought one day
not to think anymore,
I thought again,
caught, and could not stop—
Were I the horse I rode,
were I the bridge I crossed,
were I a tree
unable to move,
the lake would have
no reflections,
the sweet, soft air
no sounds.
So I hear, I see,
tell still the echoing story
of all that lives in a forest,
all that surrounds me.
Supper
Shovel it in.
Then go away again.
Then come back and
shovel it in.
Days on the way,
lawn’s like a shorn head
and all the chairs are put away
again. Shovel it in.
Eat for strength, for health.
Eat for the hell of it, for
yourself, for country and your mother.
Eat what your little brother didn’t.
Be content with your lot
and all you got.
Be whatever they want.
Shovel it in.
I can no longer think of heaven
as any place I want to go,
not even dying. I want
to shovel it in.
I want to keep on eating,
drinking, thinking.
I am ahead. I am not dead.
Shovel it in.
“Short and Clear”
FOR GREGORY, WHO SAID IT
Short and clear, dear—
short and clear.
No need for fear.
All’s here.
Keep it
short and clear.
You are the messenger,
the message, the way.
Shor
t and clear, dear,
all the way.
Scholar’s Rocks
FOR JIM DINE
1
What has been long pondered,
become encrusted,
grown into itself—
colored by world, by echoed
independence from world,
by all that it wasn’t—
what had been thought,
what had been felt,
what was it?
2
As in a forest
as if as if
one had come to
as in a forest
to a wall of the heart
a wall
of the heart
3
glass
enclosing including
stuck into
these insistent
Things
4
Ghosts of
another wall—
childhood’s—
all hung
in order
elegant and particular
hands handed
hand tools
5
What happens when
the house is at last
quiet and the lights
lowered, go finally out?
Then is it all silent?
Are the echoes still,
the reflections faded,
the places left alone?
6
As fingers round a stick,
as a pen’s held,
a thumb can help grip,
so a wrench’s extension,
a hammer’s force,
meticulous cutting clippers,
hatchet’s sharpened edge
one could not cut without.
7
I love the long wrench,
whose gears permit a tension
’twixt objects fixed
tight between its iron teeth.
So locked, one can twist
and so the object turns,
loosens, at last comes out.
This is life’s bliss!
8
Which
one
did
it?
Do you recognize
the culprit,
is your own heart
full?
9
Sometimes it’s like looking at orphans—
and no one will come.
No one seems to want them.
There’s a patience, which seems awful—
inhuman to be left,
to have no place on earth?
The heart alone holds them.
Minds made them.
10
Seeing’s believing. Beyond eyes, beyond the edges of things. The face of what’s out there is an adamant skin. One touches it, feels it. Coming, going, through the looking glass . . . Leaving marks, making a trail for the way back. One writes on the surface, sensing all that’s under it. Oceans of a common history. Things of the past.
Bub and Sis
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley Page 28