Robert Creeley
(c) Robert Creeley fotografado por Harry Redl.
A entrevista com poeta Robert Creeley começa e termina aqui.
Leonard Schwartz : In that sense, you certainly can’t write by formula, only form. I wondered if you could read from your new book?
Robert Creeley: Yeah. It’s a pleasure. Shall I read a sad occasion, a poem in the memory of Allen Ginsberg? I used a title of Walt Whitman’s, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” which is itself a wonderful poem, a poem about sitting, listening to a lecture by someone who was obviously well-informed, saying things of real import, but the listener becomes restless, the man is talking about the heavens, and the restless man goes outside and looks at the sky, the heavens. And that’s sort of parallel to my sense of what Allen was doing.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer...
A bitter twitter,
flitter,
of birds
in evening’s
settling,
a reckoning
beckoning,
someone’s getting
some sad news,
the birds gone to nest,
to roost
in the darkness,
asking no improvident questions,
none singing,
no hark,
no lark,
nothing in the quiet dark.
Begun with like hypothesis,
arms, head, shoulders,
with body state
better soon than late,
better not wait,
better not be late,
breathe ease,
fall to knees
in posture of compliance,
obeisance,
accommodation
a motivation.
All systems must be imagination
which works,
albeit have quirks.
Add by the one
or by the none,
make it by either
or or.
Or say that after you
I go.
Or say you
follow me.
See what comes after
or before,
what
you had thought.
Many’s a twenty?
A three?
Is twenty-three
plenty?
A call to reason
then
in due season,
a proposal of heaven
at seven
in the evening,
a cup of tea, a sense
of recompense
for anyone works for a living,
getting and giving.
Does it seem mind’s all?
What’s it mean
to be inside
a circle, to fly
in the sky, dear bird?
Words scattered,
tattered,
yet
said
make it
all evident,
manifest.
No contest.
One’s one again.
It’s done.
Hurry on, friend.
There is no end
to desire,
to Blake’s fire,
to Beckett’s mire,
to any such whatever.
Old friend’s dead
in bed.
Old friends die.
Goodbye!
Robert Creeley