For Love by Robert Creeley

<p>Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman</p><p>For Love</p><p>by Robert Creeley</p><p><i>for Bobbie</i></p><p>Yesterday I wanted to</p><p>speak of it, that sense above  </p><p>the others to me</p><p>important because all</p><p>that I know derives</p><p>from what it teaches me.  </p><p>Today, what is it that  </p><p>is finally so helpless,</p><p>different, despairs of its own  </p><p>statement, wants to</p><p>turn away, endlessly</p><p>to turn away.</p><p>If the moon did not ...</p><p>no, if you did not</p><p>I wouldn’t either, but  </p><p>what would I not</p><p>do, what prevention, what  </p><p>thing so quickly stopped.  </p><p>That is love yesterday  </p><p>or tomorrow, not</p><p>now. Can I eat</p><p>what you give me. I</p><p>have not earned it. Must  </p><p>I think of everything</p><p>as earned. Now love also  </p><p>becomes a reward so</p><p>remote from me I have</p><p>only made it with my mind.</p><p>Here is tedium,</p><p>despair, a painful</p><p>sense of isolation and  </p><p>whimsical if pompous</p><p>self-regard. But that image  </p><p>is only of the mind’s</p><p>vague structure, vague to me  </p><p>because it is my own.</p><p>Love, what do I think</p><p>to say. I cannot say it.</p><p>What have you become to ask,  </p><p>what have I made you into,</p><p>companion, good company,  </p><p>crossed legs with skirt, or  </p><p>soft body under</p><p>the bones of the bed.</p><p>Nothing says anything  </p><p>but that which it wishes  </p><p>would come true, fears  </p><p>what else might happen in</p><p>some other place, some  </p><p>other time not this one.  </p><p>A voice in my place, an  </p><p>echo of that only in yours.</p><p>Let me stumble into</p><p>not the confession but  </p><p>the obsession I begin with  </p><p>now. For you</p><p>also (also)</p><p>some time beyond place, or  </p><p>place beyond time, no  </p><p>mind left to</p><p>say anything at all,</p><p>that face gone, now.</p><p>Into the company of love  </p><p>it all returns.</p>