Zero by Robert Creeley

Zero 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 […]

Water Music by Robert Creeley

Water Music 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. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems […]

The Way by Robert Creeley

The Way 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 […]

The Warning by Robert Creeley

The Warning 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. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry […]

The Rain by Robert Creeley

The Rain by Robert Creeley All night the sound had come back again, and again falls this quite, 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 […]

The Mirror by Robert Creeley

The Mirror 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. ————— The End And that’s the End […]

The Innocence by Robert Creeley

The Innocence 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 […]

The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley

The Conspiracy 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. ————— The End And that’s the […]

The Carnival by Robert Creeley

The Carnival 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. ————— The End And that’s the […]

Song by Robert Creeley

Song 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 […]

Something by Robert Creeley

Something by Robert Creeley I approach with such a careful tremor, always I feel the finally foolish question of how it is, then, supposed to be felt, and by whom. I remember once in a rented room on 27th street, the woman I loved then, literally, after we had made love on the large bed […]

Other by Robert Creeley

Other 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 […]

Myself by Robert Creeley

Myself by Robert Creeley What, younger, felt was possible, now knows is not; but still not chanted enough – Walked by the sea, unchanged in memory – evening, as clouds on the far-off rim of water float, pictures of time, smoke, faintness – still the dream. I want, if older, still to know why, human, […]

Love by Robert Creeley

Love 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 ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world […]

Kore by Robert Creeley

Kore 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 […]

I Know A Man by Robert Creeley

I Know A Man 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 […]

Goodbye by Robert Creeley

Goodbye 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 […]

Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley

Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face a single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off another larger contorts to swell growing in around imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs hold to one two three four five six dry twisted yellowish brown leaves flat against the other gray trees […]

Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley

Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley 1) Sleeping birds, lead me, soft birds, be me inside this black room, back of the white moon. In the dark night sight frightens me. 2) Who is it nuzzles there with furred, round headed stare? Who, perched on the skin, body’s float, is holding on? What other one stares […]

Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley

Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley My wife and I lived all alone, contention was our only bone. I fought with her, she fought with me, and things went on right merrily. But now I live here by myself with hardly a damn thing on the shelf, and pass my days with little […]

America by Robert Creeley

America 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 […]

Age by Robert Creeley

Age by Robert Creeley Most explicit– the sense of trap as a narrowing cone one’s got stuck into and any movement forward simply wedges once more– but where or quite when, even with whom, since now there is no one quite with you–Quite? Quiet? English expression: Quait? Language of singular impedance? A dance? An involuntary […]

A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley

A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley Comes the time when it’s later and onto your table the headwaiter puts the bill, and very soon after rings out the sound of lively laughter– Picking up change, hands like a walrus, and a face like a barndoor’s, and a head without any apparent size, nothing but two […]

A Token by Robert Creeley

A Token by Robert Creeley My lady fair with soft arms, what can I say to you-words, words as if all worlds were there. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the […]

A Song by Robert Creeley

A Song 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, […]

Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning

I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set […]

Cavalier Tunes: Marching Along by Robert Browning

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing: And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. God for King Charles! Pym and such carles To the Devil that prompts ’em their treasonous […]

Cavalier Tunes: Give a Rouse by Robert Browning

King Charles, and who’ll do him right now? King Charles, and who’s ripe for fight now? Give a rouse: here’s, in Hell’s despite now, King Charles! Who gave me the goods that went since? Who raised me the house that sank once? Who helped me to gold I spent since? Who found me in wine […]

By The Fire-Side by Robert Browning

I. How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn-evenings come: And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! II. I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the […]

Boot And Saddle by Robert Browning

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens the blue from its silvery grey, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!” Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, […]

Bishop Blougram’s Apology by Robert Browning

NO more wine? then we’ll push back chairs and talk. A final glass for me, though: cool, i’ faith! We ought to have our Abbey back, you see. It’s different, preaching in basilicas, And doing duty in some masterpiece Like this of brother Pugin’s, bless his heart! I doubt if they’re half baked, those chalk […]

Before by Robert Browning

I. Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far. God must judge the couple: leave them as they are —Whichever one’s the guiltless, to his glory, And whichever one the guilt’s with, to my story! II. Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough, Strike no arm out further, […]

Any Wife To Any Husband by Robert Browning

I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou Who art all truth and who dost love me now As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say— Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still A whole long life through, had but love its will, Would death that leads me from thee […]

Another Way Of Love by Robert Browning

I. June was not over Though past the fall, And the best of her roses Had yet to blow, When a man I know (But shall not discover, Since ears are dull, And time discloses) Turned him and said with a man’s true air, Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as ’twere,— “If I […]

Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own […]

An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar by Robert Browning

Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs, The not-incurious in God’s handiwork (This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul) –To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what […]

Among the Rocks by Robert Browning

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. That […]

Aix In Provence by Robert Browning

Christ God who savest man, save most Of men Count Gismond who saved me! Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Chose time and place and company To suit it; when he struck at length My honour, ’twas with all his strength. II. And doubtlessly ere he could draw All points to one, he must […]

Abt Vogler by Robert Browning

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,–alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from […]

A Woman’s Last Word by Robert Browning

I. Let’s contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, —Only sleep! II. What so wild as words are? I and thou In debate, as birds are, Hawk on bough! III. See the creature stalking While we speak! Hush and hide the talking, Cheek on cheek! IV. What so false as […]