A Prayer (from Poetry)
Robert Creeley

Bless
something small
but infinite
and quiet.

There are senses
make an object
in their simple
feeling for one.

Comment:

What is the prayer for? “Small,” “infinite,” “quiet:” is this Nothing? Perhaps, but we were told it is “something,” if unseen. “Infinite” suggests that it is not viewable as a whole.

The second stanza is about partiality. What we know is that there are senses. These may be our physical senses. They may be the senses with which an object is taken in. The “senses make an object.” The lack of “that” in the opening of the second line of the second stanza does not merely suggest immediacy. Object and perceiver are one. Are we ourselves asking to be blessed? Before that, consider the “simple feeling.” A multiplicity (“senses”) is now one in more than one sense. All the senses are an attempt to feel, whether they are our senses or not.

Why is any direct mention of attempting, trying, achieving missing? The incompleteness of feeling is a completeness. Similarly, the prayer is the unity of the poem. I would guess an atom, in its indivisibility, as small, infinite and quiet. The building block of reality means nothing – cannot be taken in a sense, cannot be sensed – if there is no reality. Hence, the second stanza. You need both, what creates and creation. The blessing is external to the poem. The blessing is ours to give.

Woken up. At once entangled
in the business of the lake. A few hours before
dawn. Most probably. And the lake already
lives, breathes, sends off the swans
to eye him: a shadow
in the darkness seeking the path
to the human terminal. Awake. At a loss.
First shoots of grass take off from the dark ground.
Blindly. What for? Without himself, without time.
Time has grown so spatial that it is
invisible. Lost in the darkness.
Woken up. What for? If only he still had
the watch he was given for his First Communion,
if, at a suitable moment, he’d become a scout
and had a compass, if he knew how to rightly
use the compass

– he wouldn’t be here.

’95

Comment:

I did some googling. Still have no idea what the title refers to or what the ’95 is doing at the bottom, exactly. And it goes without saying I don’t know Polish.

So this comment is even more guesswork than usual. Which is fine, because some of this poem is exquisite. “A shadow / in the darkness seeking the path / to the human terminal” and “Time has grown so spatial that it is invisible” make me want to learn Polish. Maybe I’ll get to write like that.

There is nothing certain about “the business of the lake.” It does seem to be like the soup life emerged from, except it is itself alive. Is it conscious? “He” isn’t really conscious. “Woken up” and “most probably” testify to his lack of understanding. “At once entangled” makes me think he is the lake or mirrored in the lake. “Swans,” perhaps more refined desire, are in a way the “eyes” of something primal. The only difference between “him” and the lake is that he moves toward the “human terminal.” That not terribly positive implication regarding life’s meaning again pushes us to think he is the lake and the lake is he. This is a dreamworld, where all kinds of desires predominate and the only recognizable ones spy us more than the other way around.

Then we’re told he’s awake. He doesn’t understand why there is growth. He doesn’t understand time. Has the path been found? Did it disappear? The latter is the easy conclusion, but I don’t think we can take it. If time is spatial and has become invisible, he’s treading down a path. He recognizes something like growth. “Lost in the darkness:” you don’t need to be completely disoriented to wonder if you’re going down a useless path or not. He may be on the path, but he’s “without himself.”

Finally, it turns out that he may not have really awoken yet. This second “woken up” is explicitly about moral guidance and a sensitivity to needing it. If in the other two parts we’re wondering about whether the speaker is the person being talked about, there seems to be a strict distance between the narrator and subject in this part.

What’s happening may be this: let’s talk about a man wholly governed by appetite, in a lustful turmoil (see M – Black Monday’s last three lines; this is a theme Świetlicki and Kundera share). That man is not without strengths. At least the image of man itself, its shadow, moves toward an end. And one can’t say a sensuous dreamworld isn’t alive in some way. Moreover, we can say such a man isn’t oblivious of time, but that time is real for him in a way it isn’t for those of us who conceptualize. His world simply is. But there’s a catch. The same man cannot account for growth or motion toward. Moral guidance is literally needed to be able to have time and place. There isn’t even a way of marking his progress or lack of it. These considerations might push us to say man is a moral creature. Two caveats: 1) we certainly can relate to the turmoil where we are continually awaking and never realizing anything 2) “Man” is considerably narrowed in the last few lines. “Communion,” “scout,” “suitable moment:” man has a particular role or set of roles. The construction of such roles depends on favorable circumstances.

A Sickness of this World it most occasions
When Best Men die.
A Wishfulness their far Condition
To occupy.

A Chief indifference, as Foreign
A World must be
Themselves forsake — contented,
For Deity.

Comment:

The way “occasions” is used has overtones of “appropriate.” Is it most appropriate the world is sick when best men die? The Latin root of “occasions” means “to fall,” “die,” “set like the sun.” Does best men dying cause sickness in this world?

“A Sickness” parallels “A Wishfulness:” whose wishfulness does/should “their far Condition” occupy? Our wishfulness may cause the sickness, as we need the best men, in our conception, to be ever present. Our conception, unfortunately, is tied to “their far Condition.” We only know the worth of the best men through what they’ve accomplished. In our lives, they are always dead to us. (The best men have another wishfulness not a sickness of this world.)

We don’t miss the best men, though we think we do. “A Chief indifference” refers to us and only by analogy applies to them. “As Foreign A World must be Themselves forsake:” “A World” follows after “A Sickness,” “A Wishfulness,” “A Chief.” The movement is from a lack to a priority (“Chief”) to a reality (“World”). The best men might love a foreign world – a whole new place to explore excites. Only trouble: this world is that foreign world; the best men did their best in it. “Must be” cements the necessity. “Most” and “far” in the first stanza point to matters of degree. We don’t see what necessarily holds, as our ironic mourning of best men demonstrates. But the distance of the best men almost puts them in a parallel situation to us – almost. Instead of simply not knowing the world, they banish themselves from it by choice. They forsake the foreign world “for Deity.” This might say more about the best men than anything else. Compared to us, they’re knowers, indefatigable and implicitly immortal. But the best men were not strictly defined as knowers. Their restlessness drove them in this life toward some place of rest. Our relation to that place of rest is the only issue.

Winter solitude —
In a world of one color
the sound of wind.

Comment:

Initially: too bleak. Loneliness is sameness, reinforced by that hollow, echoing sound. Loneliness, sameness, emptiness. We’re where we started.

I wonder if a move from “speaker” to “we” is the point. Loneliness is an experience we’ve all had, though it isn’t clear it was or ever could be a shared experience. “Winter” is not just a specific time; it suggests that maybe there is a shared experience.

There may be a tension between “color” and “wind.” The “world” is one color. It isn’t cold, it isn’t necessarily earth or nature frosted over. It is simply one color. This seems to imply there is one unchangeable object. That object may be perceiver and perceived. The wind moves. It produces sound. We know that sound is not a steady drone.

Change resides in what seemed static being. There may be a physiological explanation for “winter solitude.” The sun doesn’t shine as much, certain chemicals don’t get produced, we feel down. Any such explanation does injustice to “solitude.” Your loneliness is not another’s: we’re all different. We’re lonely inasmuch we are individuals. That solitude, like winter itself, has seeds of change within. The sound of wind betokens a world with many colors and the communication of the poem itself.

Not so the infinite Relations — Below
Division is Adhesion’s forfeit — On High
Affliction but a Speculation — And Woe
A Fallacy, a Figment, We knew —

Comment:

The initial, surface gloss. There are “infinite Relations” as opposed to “finite.” Thus, there are two realms. One below, with division. The very concept of ‘sticking together’ has left us. One above, where being pained (“affliction”) is impossible, and previous pain (“Woe”) is unreal.

So: is all former pain unreal? That can’t – shouldn’t – be right.

We need to try again with “infinite Relations” – how does this crazy world work? – and one has to make a denial (“Not so”) to grasp the problem. What is being denied? The “infinite Relations?” What sense does that make? It means we are concerned with a number of finite relations and finite relations simply. Finite relations as numbered? Yeah, these are relationships. Unlike the deity’s mercy, there is only so much distrust and bitterness that can fester between us.

Accordingly, we can divide the “relations” into three realms: “Adhesion’s forfeit” (non-purposeful break-ups, being dumped), “Division” (a higher realm than the first), “On High.” Division makes “division” central and allows for painless, supposedly whole “On High” to exist. “On High” is both logical (“Fallacy”) and imaginary (“Figment”). But what we knew was Woe. We don’t even have that anymore.

In West Virginia (from failbetter.com)
Maggie Glover

Each morning was a fresh, blue breakdown.
I perfected my skills of isolation among those hills,
the splash back of creeks and muddied snow drifts.
I had enough money, but not enough money. I learned
the word “holler” and made friends with a boy who was born into one,
his pin-cushion eyes haunted by whatever took longer than it should,
which was everything. On the worst nights, he drove alone
on the back roads, ashing cigarettes into an empty can,
swerving back and forth to avoid the whitetails and turtles.
I made difficult choices. We kept in touch.

Comment:

“Breakdown:” the day before is deconstructed, the new day will be a reconstruction of self. How to best stay isolated? By continually changing who one is. “Splash back of creeks and muddied snow drifts” reflect that character. Water flows except in a specific season where it hardens. There is no fixed and final form.

Does this lead to the “I had enough money, but not enough money” problem? Maybe. One may demand more in flux. “I perfected” / “I had” / “I learned” / “I made:” there’s a progression where what is had in isolation is tested, made concrete (perfected/learned, had/made). What caused the change? A specific type of boy, who worried and wondered about the world. Yeah, he had money. It wasn’t ultimately important.

What really mattered was his strange innocence. He doesn’t sound like the type that could do much for himself. But that isn’t as simple as being spoiled. The truth is probably that he senses – but does not actively recognize – what isolation is. Money doesn’t mean you have a place to spend it. A girl doesn’t mean you’ve found the best friend you could possibly have. Our speaker embraced that isolation, and it made her stronger, albeit in a limited way. This gentleman’s self-destructive tendencies go hand-in-hand with a respect for life. Life is the possibility there’s something better out there.

Some kind of making, formation, had to happen. He had a part in it. What you need for a relationship is very different from what allows for self-realization. But the latter is crucial to anything healthy.

The woods were beautiful as always, but dry.
It seemed a subtle poison at the roots
drained them imperceptibly of life.
A want, or heightened colour, in each leaf
hinted profound disease, as if the rites
of generation faltered and withdrew
beyond emergencies of flood and fire
to deserts that no green could penetrate.
I shaped my stanzas, but the form seemed trite:
all metre euphemised a deepening flaw.
I heard no frog calls, and the birds were fewer
in species and in number. I trod
ungodly glows, a covenant betrayed,
a humus rotting slowly into fear.

Comment:

Recall Gary Soto’s “The Soup:” the problem of Creation might have been dominion, a license which resulted in a most unnatural, cruel appropriation by us.

Perhaps Creation and Nature are not equivalent in the poem at hand, but well before “ungodly” and “a covenant betrayed” we get the sense that what we’ve done to nature is anything but holy. The movement of the poem is curious. “Beautiful as always, but dry:” we might feel initially that the woods are bare trees in late fall or winter. We might even think the trees completely dead. Neither can be true. “Imperceptibly of life” is one hint – the draining at the roots might have killed the tree outright, and perhaps that draining was imperceptible. But maybe what we normally recognize as life is imperceptible. Are these trees alive or not?

They actually look alive, but it is life that may be worse than death:

A want, or heightened colour, in each leaf
hinted profound disease, as if the rites
of generation faltered and withdrew
beyond emergencies of flood and fire
to deserts that no green could penetrate.

“Rites of generation” is more than a foreshadowing of religious language to come. Our speaker – Henry David Thoreau – is asking a question that might be better than any asked in Walden (I put the book down when he said it would be awesome if we could all live in the boxes railroad workers put their tools in. The actual Thoreau’s capacity to tell life from death is rather suspect). How do we tell when one thing is alive, another not? The modern debate starts parsing what we could possibly mean by consciousness and trying to move to the smallest level of “living” possible. There’s “sentience,” maybe also organic growth. Whatever we think is alive, the burden of proof is on it to show it is alive.

But how do we know when something is alive or not? It’s like we have these “rites” where we, in our “higher” consciousness, name things “alive,” “not-alive.” That doesn’t mean “life” is a product of convention necessarily. We may have logically regressed, personalized something belonging to life as “life” itself. Hence, “rites of generation” which fly away from our desire made concrete. That desire was kept in check through Biblical calamity. If the “rites of generation” are what life is – nay, even if they’re only what we think life is – then they’re gone to the desert, not to wander so much as to ascend. They didn’t really falter. Our tinkering was simply pushing the green away. But that doesn’t mean green goes back to God. It just goes away. This is our world now.

And we don’t have a definition of life any more. We never really did, but before desire didn’t push us to recreate Eden. The question wasn’t asked before. It is being asked now, as we stare at beauty that scares us to death. Thoreau wants to write a poem about this; he can’t truly do so, given that he knows exactly what Greek poesis means (“making,” in general). The poem has been written. Now we’re left with his experiences. No “frog calls” or “birds.” This is very strange territory: death itself has been altered too. Reading frogs croaking and birds as symbolic of the descent or ascent of the soul. We’re not immortal? The joke’s on us. Wherever we are, it is an intermediate step. You don’t just “get” immortality. You’d have to freeze time to really pull it off. Maybe we did make a step toward it; maybe the artificial beauty can be worked with. Fine, but it is a “humus,” it has to grow or decay into something. Thoreau isn’t exactly feeling positive about all this.

One might ask about Chernobyl itself. It was a power station, not an attempt to create immortals. But that’s just it – to get more power, the atom was split. The fundamental unit of being was split.

Around the bend of a phrase
you return, it’s dawn in a book, it’s
a garden, one can
see everything, the dew, a moth
on a leaf and it’s you
who rises suddenly amid the pages
and the book grows more lovely
because it’s you
and you’ve not grown old, you walk
slowly to the door.

Comment:

Mackowski may have made a blunder: she confesses in her translation notes that “moth” is not quite the word normally used, but “butterfly.” “Return” signals time, place (“dawn,” “garden”). One “see[s]” other objects (“dew,” “moth”/”butterfly”). The “leaf” itself may trigger the “pages;” the descent has already begun. We’re trying to imagine one who imagines. The emergence is predicated on futility. She’s imagined herself as beauty, too. Beauty cannot be had, it will flicker as an image and disappear to keep itself. She is not a butterfly. Does “door” bring us back to a lonely reality? I don’t know. I’m happy to have loved and lost. It means I’m real, and they’re real – although elsewhere – when I remember them ideally. Perhaps when one is loved, they think about another and go through that door with them.

Satisfaction — is the Agent
Of Satiety —
Want — a quiet Commissary
For Infinity.

To possess, is past the instant
We achieve the Joy —
Immortality contented
Were Anomaly.

Comment:

When overfull – with too much – satisfaction can act. Only with a lot more do we feel secure. To be perfectly continent for the sake of moderation and the good is near impossible. Xenophon casts doubt on the very existence of his Socrates through the issue of continence (Memorabilia I.3.5).

Is “Want” any different from “Satisfaction,” then? It is a commissary – representative, supplier – for Infinity. Are we truly this needy and greedy? “Agent” is more general, less official than “Commissary.” It denotes action; “want” may be more passive. “Satisfaction” is achieved within plenitude. “Quiet Commissary” is not without virtues: divinity and knowledge are not had loudly.

How are the most important things the seeming object of greed? Our fear is only one explanation. Do we ever really possess anything? The instant we are joyful, possession is both of the past and also lying past us, i.e. a goal post. We ultimately are what we feel. We work toward feeling. As we are between possession always, an infinite extension of our lives only extends our mode of being indefinitely. Any serious, satisfactory account of human being focuses on us as desiring, pulling forth from and being drawn toward possibility.

Suffer as in allow.

List as in want.

Listless as in transcending
desire, or not rising
to greet it.

To list
is to lean,
dangerously,
to one side.

Have you forgotten?

Spent
as in exhausted.

Comment:

The regression forms a circle. “As in” constitutes our markers, where words are given all-too-personal definitions. “Suffer as in allow” establishes the speaker almost entirely. She’s letting “thy will be done,” but this seems to have less to do with a redeemer God and more to do with a numbness from an earthly economy of desire.

“List” and “want” flow from “suffer as in allow.” Why do we just accept, trying not to feel? Sometimes it is a pretend bravery; we know bad things will happen. We want to say “whatever” with the requisite neglect in deed. This is not a habit peculiar to the young.

However, older: years upon years poured into something. Not just wishes. Actual moments of contact, bliss, achievement. She’s listing listlessly as nothing substantial and lasting has been gained. If one gains virtually nothing over a long period of time, one has defined oneself as a life-less desire. Not that getting everything you want is life. But “less” is not realistically a central feature of adult life. We need more even as we do more with less. (Many of us are disappointed with a lack of responsibility.)

Listing should be learning: one should be sorting, prioritizing. Instead, there’s just leaning. One is the desire, the desire is a crutch. Standing straight? Standing up for oneself? The poem’s speaker descends further, blaming another: “Have you forgotten?” I don’t know this poem is just a love poem. Rather, we do desire and are pained by it in a most fundamental way. This is not to excuse the obsessive. Desire can list to find achievable, realistic ends and still fall short. We do need others at some point. Not just for the alleviation of frustration, but for the more basic problem that thinking can be unanchored, left only with its own devices. There’s only so much one alone can do.