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I almost met you
On a Saturday
In Gloucester.
The wind blew easterly.
There was a jar of mums
On a table near the window.
Their yellows were calling
To each other.
Place-names
Were put back
In the pencil drawer
Before I noticed your shadow.
From no nowhere not near the sea on blue field flax the cemetery's absolutely solitary you and you and a third of a pound of bread for supper in the refectory where I would die of hunger if you--if soon--if on this unday--one undoing would be undone
The rain falls on. Acres of violets unfold. Dandelion, mayflower Myrtle and forsythia follow. The cardinals call to each other. Echoes of delicate Breath-broken whistles. I know something now About subject, object, verb And about one word that fails For lack of substance. Now people say, He passed on Instead of that. Unit Of space subtracted by one. It almost rhymes with earth. What is a poet but a person Who lives on the ground Who laughs and listens Without pretension of knowing Anything, driven by the lyric's Quest for rest that never (God willing) will be found? Concord, kitchen table, 1966. Corbetts, Creeley, a grandmother And me. Sweater, glasses, One wet eye. Lots of laughter Before and after. Every meeting Rhymed and fluttered into meter. The beat was the message. . . . (for Robert Creeley)
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as if a road could be otherwise but geometry
defies the man who is lost on the road that
the trees want to reach and reach down
to his walking on
along a verticality that defies
the requirements of normative perspective
and so he will reach, and the trees against chalk—
the gesture of the arm extended is central
to all Soutine’s work be it a branch or an ache
or a split of the face, going off. In this case
can you say that a man is lost just because
you cannot distinguish him from the background.