"The words, several"

Hart Crane
for Slater Brown

by Robert Creeley
(1968)

1.
He had been stuttering, by the edge
of the street, one foot still
on the sidewalk, and the other
in the gutter...

like a bird, say, wired to flight, the
wings, pinned to their motion, stuffed.

The words, several, and for each, several
senses.
-------"It is very difficult to sum up
briefly..."
---------It always was.

(Slater, let no come home.
The letters have proved insufficient.
The mind cannot hang to them as it could
to the words.

There are ways beyond
what I have here to work with,
what my head cannot push to any kind
of conclusion.

But my own ineptness
cannot bring them to hand,
the particulars of those times
we had talked.)

"Men kill themselves because they are
afraid of death, he says..."

The push
---------beyond and
into


2
Respect, they said he respected the
ones with the learning, lacking it
himself
---------(Waldo Frank & his
6 languages)
---------------What had seemed
important
While Crane sailed to Mexico I was writing
(so that one betrayed
-----------------------himself)
He slowed
-------------(without those friends to keep going, to
keep up), stopped
----------------------dead and the head could not
go further
-----------without those friends

Hart Crane.

---------------Hart