Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Robert Creeley, 1926-2005

Two from Memory Gardens (New Directions, 1986):

FOR TED BERRIGAN

After, size of place
you’d filled
in suddenly emptied
world all too apparent

and as if New England
shrank, grew physically
smaller like Connecticut,
Vermont – all the little

things otherwise unattended
so made real by you,
things to do today,
left empty, waiting

sadly for no one
will come again now.
It’s all moved inside,
all that dear world

in mind for forever,
as long as one walks
and talks here,
thinking of you.

***

HEAVEN KNOWS

Seemingly never until one’s dead
is there possible measure –

but of what then or for what
other than the same plagues

attended the living with misunderstanding
and wanted a compromise as pledge

one could care for any of them
heaven knows, if that’s where one goes.

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