Yesterday I wanted to
speak of it, that sense above
the others to me
important because all
that I know derives
from what it teaches me.
Today, what is it that
is finally so helpless,
different, despairs of its own
statement, wants to
turn away, endlessly
to turn away.
If the moon did not ...
no, if you did not
I wouldn’t either, but
what would I not
do, what prevention, what
thing so quickly stopped.
That is love yesterday
or tomorrow, not
now. Can I eat
what you give me. I
have not earned it. Must
I think of everything
as earned. Now love also
becomes a reward so
remote from me I have
only made it with my mind.
Here is tedium,
despair, a painful
sense of isolation and
whimsical if pompous
self-regard. But that image
is only of the mind’s
vague structure, vague to me
because it is my own.
Love, what do I think
to say. I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask,
what have I made you into,
companion, good company,
crossed legs with skirt, or
soft body under
the bones of the bed.
Nothing says anything
but that which it wishes
would come true, fears
what else might happen in
some other place, some
other time not this one.
A voice in my place, an
echo of that only in yours.
Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you
also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to
say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.
Robert Creeley
__________________________________________________________________
For silence
Yesterday I wanted to lie down for
-ever. I never wanted to speak
to you or the others, who are helpless.
I find it important though, to speak to
those who can’t. I mean there is no reply
to whatever I said. Or debate on it.
We speak to others for certainty but
that is something I don’t need.
Nor is it something I want to hear.
There are few things that seem to remain
certain. But I can tell you that all the
things that do, are age old facts about me
and you. Like if you touch fire you’ll
burn up like dead, dry wood. Or you’ll
manage to walk away with a brief feel
of reverence for those fickle flames.
Or, how no matter what you do death is
lurking on you. Teeming with life and love
won’t tarnish its luminescent craving
to make you one with the lush soil beneath
our very feet. “Death waits for no man,” says
those who rely on the cliché. I don’t.
Death waits for whoever wants it.
You don’t die unless you’re willing.
You don’t live unless that’s the case too.
Prevention for either one might be possible,
but not for too long. Only ‘til you’re dead.
Whether that is physically or in
your heart, where it hurts the most.
Where death can come at an instant form the
hands of those who can speak.
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