Charles Bernstein
Robert Creeley in conversation with his mother, 1970 (MP3 oral history)
Creeley in conversation with his mother on her first visit to Gloucester, probably summer 1970:
audio file courtesy PennSound: (32:32): MP3
(Sidney Goldfarb comes into the conversation at the end.)
For My Mother: Genevieve Jules Creeley
April 8, 1887 - October 7, 1972
Tender, semi-
articulate flickers
of your
presence, all
those years
past
now, eighty-
five, impossible to
count them
one by one, like
addition, sub-
traction, missing
not one. The last
curled up, in
on yourself,
position you take
in the bed, hair
wisped up
on your head, a
top knot, body
skeletal, eyes
closed against,
it must be,
further disturbance––
breathing a skim
of time, lightly
kicks the intervals––
days, days and
years of it,
work, changes,
sweet flesh caught
at the edges,
dignity's faded
dilemma. It
is your life, oh
no one's
forgotten anything
ever. They want
to make you
happy when
they remember. Walk
a little, get
up, now, die
safely,
easily, into
singleness, too
tired with it
to keep
on and on.
Waves break at
the darkness
under the road, sounds
in the faint
night's softness. Look
at them, catching
the light, white
edge as they turn––
always again
and again. Dead
one, two,
three hours––
all these minutes
pass. Is it,
was it, ever
you alone
again, how
long you kept
at it, your
pride, your
lovely, confusing
discretion. Mother, I
love youfor
whatever that
means,
meant––more
than I know, body
gave me my
own, generous,
inexorable place
of you. I feel
the mouth's sluggish-
ness, slips on
turns of things
said, to you,
too soon, too late,
wants to
go back to beginning,
smells of the hospital
room, the doctor
she responds
to now, the
order––get me
there. "Death's
let you out––"
comes true,
this, that,
endlessly circular
life, and we
came back
to see you one
last
time, this
time? Your head
shuddered,
it seemed, your
eyes wanted,
I thought,
to see
who it was.
I am here,
and will follow.
This poem originally appear in Away and was collected in the first volume of the University of California Press collected poems.
© Estate of Robert Creeley. Used with permission.