|    C O N T E N T S    |    H O M E P A G E    |    J A C K E T   #   F O U R T E E N    |    J U L Y   2 0 0 1  
This issue of JACKET is a co-production with SALT magazine  

Robert Creeley

Scholar's Rocks

                            for Jim Dine

1

What has been long pondered,
become encrusted,
grown into itself —

colored by world, by echoed
independence from world,
by all that it wasn't —

what had been thought,
what had been felt,
what was it?





2

As in a forest
as if    as if
one had come to

as in a forest
to a wall of the heart

a wall
of the heart





3

glass
enclosing including

stuck into
these insistent

Things




4

Ghosts of
another wall —

childhood's —
all hung

in order
elegant and particular

hands    handed
hand tools





5

What happens when
the house is at last
quiet and the lights
lowered, go finally out?

Then is it all silent?
Are the echoes still,
the reflections faded,
the places left alone?





6

As fingers round a stick,
as a pen's held,
a thumb can help grip,
so a wrench's extension,

a hammer's force,
meticulous cutting clippers,
hatchet's sharpened edge
one could not cut without.




7

I love the long wrench,
whose gears permit a tension
'twixt objects fixed
tight between its iron teeth.

So locked, one can twist
and so the object turns,
loosens, at last comes out.
This is life's bliss!





8

Which
one
did
it?

Do you recognize
the culprit,
is your own heart
full?






9

Sometimes it's like looking at orphans —
and no one will come.

No one seems to want them.
There's a patience, which seems awful —

inhuman to be left,
to have no place on earth?

The heart alone holds them.
Minds made them.

10

Seeing's believing. Beyond eyes, beyond the edges of things. The face of what's out there is an adamant skin. One touches it, feels it. Coming, going, through the looking glass... Leaving marks, making a trail for the way back. One writes on the surface, sensing all that's under it. Oceans of a common history. Things of the past.

 
J A C K E T  # 14 and S A L T # 13 Contents page 
Select other issues of the magazine from the | Jacket catalog | read about Jacket |
 Other links: | top | homepage | bookstores | literary links | internet design|
Copyright Notice: Please respect the fact that this material is copyright. It is made available here without charge for personal use only. It may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for any other purpose  
 This issue of Jacket is a co-production with SALT magazine, an international journal of poetry and poetics, edited by John Kinsella : PO Box 937, Great Wilbraham, Cambridge PDO, CB1 5JX United Kingdom ISSN 1324-7131

This material is copyright © Robert Creeley and Jim Dine and Jacket magazine and SALT magazine 2001
The URL address of this page is http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket14/creeley-scholars-rocks.html