Robert Creeley
In memory of Robert Creeley, who died yesterday morning at the age of 78...
From Words:
The Answer
Will we speak to each other
making the grass bend as if
a wind were before us, will our
way be as graceful, as
substantial as the movement
of something moving so gently.
We break things in pieces like
walls we break ourselves into
hearing them fall just to hear it.
The Eye
The eye I look out of
or hands I use,
feet walking,
they stay particular.
I wanted
one place to be
where I was
always.
I wanted you
somehow equal,
my love, one says--
I speak with that body.
But then it happens--
another time, a particular
circumstance--surrounded by such
a distance.
You took my heart
which was with you,
you took my hands
which I used for you.
Oh when regrets stop
and the silence comes
back to be
a place still for you,
our bodies will tell
their own story, past
all error,
come back to us.
The World
I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,
to comfort you, and got
up, and went to the window,
pushed back, as you asked me to,
the curtain, to see
the outline of the trees
in the night outside.
The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that
came in, on us, not
merely my hands or yours,
or a wetness so comfortable,
but in the dark then
as you slept, the grey
figure came so close
and leaned over,
between us, as you
slept, restless, and
my own face had to
see it, and be seen by it,
the man it was, your
grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken--
hated by love, and dead,
but not dead, for an
instant, saw me, myself
the intruder, as he was not.
I tried to say, it is
all right, she is
happy, you are no longer
needed. I said,
he is dead, and he
went as you shifted
and woke, at first afraid,
then knew by my own knowing
what had happened--
and the light then
of the sun coming
for another morning
in the world.
From Words:
The Answer
Will we speak to each other
making the grass bend as if
a wind were before us, will our
way be as graceful, as
substantial as the movement
of something moving so gently.
We break things in pieces like
walls we break ourselves into
hearing them fall just to hear it.
The Eye
The eye I look out of
or hands I use,
feet walking,
they stay particular.
I wanted
one place to be
where I was
always.
I wanted you
somehow equal,
my love, one says--
I speak with that body.
But then it happens--
another time, a particular
circumstance--surrounded by such
a distance.
You took my heart
which was with you,
you took my hands
which I used for you.
Oh when regrets stop
and the silence comes
back to be
a place still for you,
our bodies will tell
their own story, past
all error,
come back to us.
The World
I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,
to comfort you, and got
up, and went to the window,
pushed back, as you asked me to,
the curtain, to see
the outline of the trees
in the night outside.
The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that
came in, on us, not
merely my hands or yours,
or a wetness so comfortable,
but in the dark then
as you slept, the grey
figure came so close
and leaned over,
between us, as you
slept, restless, and
my own face had to
see it, and be seen by it,
the man it was, your
grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken--
hated by love, and dead,
but not dead, for an
instant, saw me, myself
the intruder, as he was not.
I tried to say, it is
all right, she is
happy, you are no longer
needed. I said,
he is dead, and he
went as you shifted
and woke, at first afraid,
then knew by my own knowing
what had happened--
and the light then
of the sun coming
for another morning
in the world.