Ho Ho

by ROBERT CREELEY

for Joel

I have broken the small bounds of this existence and am travelling south

on route 90. It is approximately midnight, surrogate earth time, and you

who could, can, and will never take anything seriously will die as dumb as ever

while I alone in state celestial shoot forward at designed rate, speed at last unimpeded.

From “Windows” (New Directions: $19.95, cloth; $10.95, paper; 152 pp.; 0-8112-1122-3 and 0-8112-1123-1). Creeley is the Samuel P. Capen professor of poetry and the humanities at the State University of New York at Buffalo and is currently New York State Poet for 1989-1991. He held the bicentennial chair in American Studies at Helsinki University in 1988. The previous year, he was made a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal. “Windows,” a collection in which many poems deal with kinds of travel, is his 11th book. 1990, Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Press.