Robert Creeley 

After Lorca

(For M. Marti)

 

The Church is a business , and the rich

are the business men .

When they pull on the bells , the

poor come pilling in and when a poor man dies , he has a wooden

cross , and they rush through the ceremony .

But when a rich man dies , they

drag out the Sacrament

and a golden Cross , and go doucement , doucement

to the ceremony .

And the poor love it

and think it's crazy .

 

 

 

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 &

why not , buy a goddamn big car ,

 

drive , he sd , for

christ's sake , look

out where yr going .

 

 

The Hill

 

It is sometime since i have been

to what it was had once turned me backwards ,

and make my head into

a cruel instrument .

 

It is simple

to confess . Then done ,

to walk away , walk away ,

to come again .

 

But that form , I must answer ,

is dead in me , completely ,

and I will not allow it

to reappear -

 

Saith perversity , the wilful ,

the magnanimous cruelty ,

which is in me

like a hill .

 

 

The Signboard

 

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 .

 

 

 

Photo by Allen Ginsberg

 

 

For Love

(For Bobbie)

 

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 .

 

 

 

 

The Rain

 

All night the sound had

come back again ,

and again falls

this quiet , persistent rain .

 

What am I to myself

that must be remembered ,

insisted upon ,

so often ? Is it

 

that never the ease ,

even the hardness ,

of rain falling

will have for me

 

something other than this ,

something not so insistent -

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness .

 

Love , if you love me ,

lie next to me .

Be for me , like rain ,

the getting out

 

of the tiredness , the fatuousness , the semi-

lust of intentional indifference .

Be wet

with a decent happiness .  

Contemporary American Poetry - Edited by Donald Hall - 2nd - Penguin Books - 1972