Robert Creeley
Sanine to Leda
Beyond this road the blackness bends
in warmth. Two, then three or four,
lovers with wisdom for themselves
enough are sitting there in vague,
unbending poses. They sit.
The quiet grass holds roses.
Begin with that. The beautiful
comes later. Love, the several roses,
lovers with wisdom for themselves,
vague, unbending poses. Look.
Each loses what he chooses.
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.
A Marriage
The first retainer
he gave to her
was a golden
wedding ring.
The second--late at night
he woke up,
leaned over on an elbow,
and kissed her.
The third and the last--
he died with
and gave up loving
and lived with her.
The Place
What is the form is the gro-
tesquerie--the accident
of the moon's light
on your face.
Oh love, an empty table!
An empty bottle also.
But no trick will go
so far but not further.
The end of the year is a div-
ision, a drunken derision
of composition's accident.
We both fell.
I fell. You fell.
In hell we will tell of it.
Form's accidents, we move back-
wards to love...
The movement of the
sentence tells me of you
as it was the bottle we drank?
No. It was no accident.
Agh, form is what happens?
Form is an accompaniment.
I to love, you to love:
syntactic accident.
It will all come true,
in a year.
The empty bottle, the empty table,
tell where we were.
Pieces
I didn't
want
to hurt you.
Don't
stop
to think. It
hurts
to live
like this,
meat
sliced
walking.
For an Anniversary
Where you dream of water
I have held a handful of sand.
My manners are unprepossessing.
I stand here awkward, and a long time.
I am mainly an idiot.
You are almost beautiful.
We will both be miserable
but no one is damned