For Love

For Love

By Robert Creeley

for Bobbie



Yesterday I wanted to

speak of it, that sense above

the others to me

important because all



that I know derives

from what it teaches me.

Today, what is it that

is finally so helpless,



different, despairs of its own

statement, wants to

turn away, endlessly

to turn away.



If the moon did not ...

no, if you did not

I wouldn’t either, but

what would I not

do, what prevention, what

thing so quickly stopped.

That is love yesterday

or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat

what you give me. I

have not earned it. Must

I think of everything

as earned. Now love also

becomes a reward so

remote from me I have

only made it with my mind.


Here is tedium,

despair, a painful

sense of isolation and

whimsical if pompous



self-regard. But that image

is only of the mind’s

vague structure, vague to me

because it is my own.



Love, what do I think

to say. I cannot say it.

What have you become to ask,

what have I made you into,



companion, good company,

crossed legs with skirt, or

soft body under

the bones of the bed.



Nothing says anything

but that which it wishes

would come true, fears

what else might happen in



some other place, some

other time not this one.

A voice in my place, an

echo of that only in yours.



Let me stumble into

not the confession but

the obsession I begin with

now. For you



also (also)

some time beyond place, or

place beyond time, no

mind left to



say anything at all,

that face gone, now.

Into the company of love

it all returns.