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Robert Creeley Short Poems

Famous Short Robert Creeley Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Robert Creeley. A collection of the all-time best Robert Creeley short poems


by Robert Creeley
 She stood at the window. There was
a sound, a light.
She stood at the window. A face.

Was it that she was looking for,
he thought. Was it that
she was looking for. He said,

turn from it, turn
from it. The pain is
not unpainful. Turn from it.

The act of her anger, of
the anger she felt then,
not turning to him.



by Robert Creeley
 Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,

these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,

our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.

Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.

Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.

by Robert Creeley
 You send me your poems,
I'll send you mine.

Things tend to awaken
even through random communication

Let us suddenly
proclaim spring. And jeer

at the others,
all the others.

I will send a picture too
if you will send me one of you.

by Robert Creeley
 My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what

can I say to
you-words, words
as if all
worlds were there.

Kore  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 As I was walking
 I came upon
chance walking
 the same road upon.

As I sat down
 by chance to move
later
 if and as I might,

light the wood was,
 light and green,
and what I saw
 before I had not seen.

It was a lady
 accompanied
by goat men
 leading her.

Her hair held earth.
 Her eyes were dark.
A double flute
 made her move.

"O love,
 where are you
leading
 me now?"



Song  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 What I took in my hand
grew in weight. You must
understand it
was not obscene.

Night comes. We sleep.
Then if you know what
say it.
Don't pretend.

Guises are
what enemies wear. You
and I live
in a prayer.

Helpless. Helpless,
should I speak.
Would you.
What do you think of me.

No woman ever was,
was wiser
than you. None is
more true.

But fate, love, fate
scares me. What
I took in my hand
grows in weight.

by Robert Creeley
 The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.

Water music,
loud in the clearing

off the boats,
birds, leaves.

They look for a place
to sit and eat--

no meaning,
no point.

by Robert Creeley
 America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.

by Robert Creeley
 Whereas the man who hits
the gong dis-
proves it, in all its
simplicity --

Even so the attempt
makes for triumph, in
another man.

Likewise in love I
am not foolish or in-
competent. My method is not a

tenderness, but hope
defined.

by Robert Creeley
 My love's manners in bed
are not to be discussed by me,
as mine by her
I would not credit comment upon gracefully.

Yet I ride by the margin of that lake in
the wood, the castle,
and the excitement of strongholds;
and have a small boy's notion of doing good.

Oh well, I will say here,
knowing each man,
let you find a good wife too,
and love her as hard as you can.

by Robert Creeley
 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.

Zero  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 for Mark Peters

Not just nothing,
Not there's no answer,
Not it's nowhere or
Nothing to show for it -

It's like There's no past like
the present. It's
all over with us.
There are no doors...

Oh my god! Like
I wish I had a dog.
Oh my god!
I had a dog but he's gone.

His name was Zero,
something for nothing!
You like dog biscuits?
Fill in the blank.

A Song  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 I had wanted a quiet testament
and I had wanted, among other things,
a song.
 That was to be
of a like monotony.
 (A grace
Simply. Very very quiet.
 A murmur of some lost
thrush, though I have never seen one.

Which was you then. Sitting
and so, at peace, so very much now this same quiet.

A song.

And of you the sign now, surely, of a gross
perpetuity
 (which is not reluctant, or if it is,
it is no longer important.

A song.

Which one sings, if he sings it,
with care.

by Robert Creeley
 Looking to the sea, it is a line
of unbroken mountains.

It is the sky.
It is the ground. There
we live it, on it.

It is a mist
now tangent to another
quiet. Here the leaves
come, there
is the rock in evidence

or evidence.
What I come to do
is partial, partially kept.

by Robert Creeley
 For love-I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.

Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.

Love  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 The thing comes
of itself

 (Look up
to see
 the cat & the squirrel,
 the one
torn, a red thing,
 & the other
somehow immaculate

Other  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 Having begun in thought there
in that factual embodied wonder
what was lost in the emptied lovers
patience and mind I first felt there
wondered again and again what for
myself so meager and finally singular
despite all issued therefrom whether
sister or mother or brother and father
come to love's emptied place too late
to feel it again see again first there
all the peculiar wet tenderness the care
of her for whom to be other was first fate.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry