there are half a dozen reasons and people to explain why this poem has been in my head lately.

Robert Creeley / Myself

What, younger, felt

was possible, now knows

is not - but still

not chanted enough -



Walked by the sea,

unchanged in memory -

evening, as clouds

on the far-off rim



of water float,

pictures of time,

smoke, faintness -

still the dream.



I want, if older,

still to know

why, human, men

and women are



so torn, so lost,

why hopes cannot

find better world

than this.



Shelley is dead and gone,

who said,

"Taught them not this -

to know themselves;



their might could not repress

the mutiny within,

And for the morn

of truth they feigned,



deep night

Caught them ere evening . . ."