I want, if older, still to know

Despite all the frenzied days of packing and preparations, the stocktaking is inevitable and the thought visits you ever so often.

How, in defiance of life's endless disasters and disappointments, one goes on, even when nothing new is promised or seems possible.

The love of truth sounds way too lofty to describe this urge, because it is more simply a desire for self-knowledge, for self-respect, for the respect of others.

Most of all, it is a refusal to let anyone, under whatever circumstances, trample on your inalienable imperative of existing, of standing upright in your own shape, of growing and expressing yourself according to your own autonomy.

Thus I shall hold it close forever keenly, repeating it like a mantra, wherever I am.


Because they shall have no dominion.

*       *       *

Myself (click to listen to Creeley's reading)

What, younger, felt
was possible, now knows
is not—but still
not changed 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 . . ."