Robert Creeley

The Warning

For love-I would Split open your head and put A candle in Behind the eyes. Love is dead in us If we forget The virtues of an amulet And quick surprise.

A Song

I had wanted a quiet testament And I had wanted, among other things, A song. That was to be Of a like monotony. (A grace Simply. Very very quiet. A murmur of some lost

Song

What I took in my hand Grew in weight. You must Understand it Was not obscene. Night comes. We sleep. Then if you know what Say it. Don’t pretend. Guises are What enemies wear.

A Wicker Basket

Comes the time when it’s later And onto your table the headwaiter Puts the bill, and very soon after Rings out the sound of lively laughter Picking up change, hands like a walrus, And

Myself

What, younger, felt Was possible, now knows Is not – but still Not chanted enough – Walked by the sea, Unchanged in memory – Evening, as clouds On the far-off rim Of water float,

Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face A single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off Another larger contorts to swell growing in around Imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs Hold to one two three

Zero

for Mark Peters Not just nothing, Not there’s no answer, Not it’s nowhere or Nothing to show for it – It’s like There’s no past like The present. It’s All over with us. There

Goodbye

She stood at the window. There was A sound, a light. She stood at the window. A face. Was it that she was looking for, He thought. Was it that She was looking for.

America

America, you ode for reality! Give back the people you took. Let the sun shine again On the four corners of the world You thought of first but do not Own, or keep like

The Innocence

Looking to the sea, it is a line Of unbroken mountains. It is the sky. It is the ground. There We live it, on it. It is a mist Now tangent to another Quiet.

The Mirror

Seeing is believing. Whatever was thought or said, These persistent, inexorable deaths Make faith as such absent, Our humanness a question, A disgust for what we are. Whatever the hope, Here it is lost.

Something

I approach with such A careful tremor, always I feel the finally foolish Question of how it is, Then, supposed to be felt, And by whom. I remember Once in a rented room on

The Way

My love’s manners in bed Are not to be discussed by me, As mine by her I would not credit comment upon gracefully. Yet I ride by the margin of that lake in The

The Conspiracy

You send me your poems, I’ll send you mine. Things tend to awaken Even through random communication Let us suddenly Proclaim spring. And jeer At the others, All the others. I will send a

Clemente's Images

1) Sleeping birds, lead me, Soft birds, be me Inside this black room, Back of the white moon. In the dark night Sight frightens me. 2) Who is it nuzzles there With furred, round

Age

Most explicit The sense of trap As a narrowing Cone one’s got Stuck into and Any movement Forward simply Wedges once more But where Or quite when, Even with whom, Since now there is

Kore

As I was walking I came upon Chance walking the same road upon. As I sat down by chance to move Later if and as I might, Light the wood was, light and green,

I Know A Man

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

The Rain

All night the sound had Come back again, And again falls This quite, persistent rain. What am I to myself That must be remembered, Insisted upon So often? Is it That never the ease,

Water Music

The words are a beautiful music. The words bounce like in water. Water music, Loud in the clearing Off the boats, Birds, leaves. They look for a place To sit and eat No meaning,

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

A Form Of Women

I have come far enough From where I was not before To have seen the things Looking in at me from through the open door And have walked tonight By myself To see the

Ballad Of The Despairing Husband

My wife and I lived all alone, Contention was our only bone. I fought with her, she fought with me, And things went on right merrily. But now I live here by myself With

The Carnival

Whereas the man who hits The gong dis- Proves it, in all its Simplicity Even so the attempt Makes for triumph, in Another man. Likewise in love I Am not foolish or in- Competent.