Robert Creeley (1926 - 2005)

The Conspiracy

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.



For Friendship

For friendship
make a chain that holds,
to be bound to
others, two by two,

a walk, a garland,
handed by hands
that cannot move
unless they hold.



The Sentence

There is that in love
which, by the syntax of,
men find women and join
their bodies to their minds

-which wants so to acquire
a continuity, a place,
a demonstration that it must
be one's own sentence.



As We Sit

There is a long
stretch of sky
before us. The road

goes out to the channel
of the water. Birds
fly in the faintly

white sky. A sound
shuffles over
and over, shifting

sand and
water. A wind
blows steadily

as we sit.