IN A BOAT SHED
I waited too long.
I waited for you forever and ever:
the changing unchanging restlessness
of the signs they didn’t put up
or down; the boxes of oranges,
rat poisons, barns, a sled with no runners,
snow, refreshments, pineapples;
the odor of burnt wood, cigarettes
neither one of us should smoke,
but do –
I waited for you.
THE DISHONEST MAILMEN
They are taking all my letters, and they
put them into a fire.
I see the flames, etc.
But do not care, etc.
They burn everything I have, or what little
I have. I don’t care, etc.
The poem supreme, addressed to
emptiness – this is the courage
necessary. This is something
quite different.
THE DEATH OF VENUS
I dreamt her sensual proportions
had suffered sea-change,
that she was a porpoise, a
sea-beast rising lucid from the mist.
The sound of waves killed speech
but there were gestures –
of my own, it was to call her closer,
of hers, she snorted and filled her lungs with water,
then sank, to the bottom,
and looking down, clear it was, like crystal,
there I saw her.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT
Had you the eyes of a goat,
they would be almond, half-green, half-
yellow, an almond
shape to them. Were you
less as you are, cat-like, a brush
head, sad, sad, un-
goatlike.
THE SIGN BOARD
The quieter the people are
the slower the time passes
until there is a solitary man
sitting in the figure of silence.
Then scream at him,
come here you idiot it’s going to go off.
A face that is no face
but the features, of a face, pasted
on a face until that face
is faceless, answers by
a being nothing there
where there was a man.
THERE
Miles back
in the wake,
days faded –
nights sleep seemed
falling down
into some deadness –
killing it,
thinking dullness,
thinking body
was dying.
Then
you changed it.
WINTER
Snow lifts it
by slowing
the movement expected,
makes walking
slower, harder,
makes face ache,
eyes blur, hands fumble,
makes the day explicit,
the night quiet,
the outside more so
and the inside glow
with warmth, with people
if you’re lucky, if
world’s good to you,
won’t so simply
kill you, freeze you.
OH
Oh like a bird
falls down
out of air,
oh like a disparate
small snowflake
melts momently.
*
all from Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems, 1945-2005, edited by Benjamin Friedlander (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)
*
NOTE: The format of line 3 of “The Dishonest Mailmen” is inaccurate.