Sipping from Goti

 for Paul Gervais

   From whatever place

   they may have come from,

   from under rocks,

   that moistness, or the sea,

   or else in those

   slanting places of darkness,

   in the woods, they

   are here and ourselves

   with them. All

   the forms we know,

   the designs, the

   closed-eye visions of

   order - these too they are,

   in the skin we

   share with them.

   

  

   if you twist one

   even insignificant part

   of your body

   to another, imagined

   situation of where it

   might be, you'll

   feel the pain of all

   such distortion and

   the voices will

   flood your head with

   terror. No thing 

   you can do can

   be otherwise than

   these people, large

   or small, however

   you choose to think

   them - a drop of

   water, glistening

   on a grassblade, or

   the whole continent,

   the whole world of size ..

Robert Creeley

Selected Poems

  People

  [fragment]

University of California Press, 1991©