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,
Four Days In Vermont
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