16.12.18

Vancouver Writing: Robert Creeley

Yesterdays

Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember   

As time W. C. Williams dies and we are   

Back from a hard two years in Guatemala   

Where the meager provision of being   

Schoolmaster for the kids of the patrones

Of two coffee plantations has managed   

Neither a life nor money. Leslie dies in   

Horror of bank giving way as she and her   

Sister and their friends tunnel in to make   

A cubby. We live in an old cement brick   

Farmhouse already inside the city limits   

Of Albuquerque. Or that has all really   

Happened and we go to Vancouver where,   

Thanks to friends Warren and Ellen Tallman,   

I get a job teaching at the University of British   

Columbia. It’s all a curious dream, a rush   

To get out of the country before the sad   

Invasion of the Bay of Pigs, that bleak use   

Of power. One of my British colleagues   

Has converted the assets of himself and   

His wife to gold bullion and keeps the   

Ingots in a sturdy suitcase pushed under   

Their bed. I love the young, at least I   

Think I do, in their freshness, their attempt   

To find ways into Canada from the western   

Reaches. Otherwise the local country seems   

Like a faded Edwardian sitcom. A stunned   

Stoned woman runs one Saturday night up   

And down the floors of the Hydro Electric   

Building on Pender with the RCMP in hot

Pursuit where otherwise we stood in long   

Patient lines, extending often several blocks   

Up the street. We were waiting to get our   

Hands stamped and to be given a 12 pack   

Of Molson’s. I think, I dream, I write the   

Final few chapters of The Island, the despairs   

Gathering at the end. I read Richard Brautigan’s   

Trout Fishing In America but am too uptight   

To enjoy his quiet, bright wit. Then that   

Summer there is the great Vancouver Poetry   

Festival, Allen comes back from India, Olson   

From Gloucester, beloved Robert Duncan   

From Stinson Beach. Denise reads “Hypocrite   

Women” to the Burnaby ladies and Gary Snyder,   

Philip Whalen, and Margaret Avison are there   

Too along with a veritable host of the young.   

Then it’s autumn again. I’ve quit my job   

And we head back to Albuquerque   

And I teach again at the university, and   

Sometime just about then I must have   

Seen myself as others see or saw me,   

Even like in a mirror, but could not quite   

Accept either their reassuring friendship   

Or their equally locating anger. Selfish,   

Empty, I kept at it. Thirty-eight years later   

I seem to myself still much the same,   

Even if I am happier, I think, and older.

- Robert Creeley from: The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005.