474
G. S. FRASER
particqlarly a sort of flatness in its last two lines? (One notes that
the topic and the handling of it have an odd affinity with Philip
Larkin's poem on "the toad work": I never thought I would find any
affinities between these two.)
ON WORK
The smell in the diamond morning was
of a restaurant cleaning up. Two men
carried a container full of slops
to a c'ommercial garbage truck
and drove the night-time tares away
once appetite had made the day.
Portage of day from night to night,
I had hoped to sit in the staring sun
at bitter ease, cool in the tares
of will, and also wonder how to be
not part of it, the cartage, slops,
and increme'nts of day. Who
is
to eat
with such an attitude?, wooing the world
with claims. Porters and their freights
form in the aches, so I must carry three
pieces of paper and a ball-point pen
from one desk to another for profit
while there
is
profit under the sun.
Profit-prophet
pun, maybe, in the last line? I don't know. But other–
wise it is rather drably smart and flat.
As for Creeley, the enormous charm has always been there, and a
great danger I suppose, though wonderful in the man himself, a mixture
of Captain Hook and Robert Louis Stevenson. The dangerous tightrope
for Creeley is between ease and difficulty with slightness. I will put
down an ambiguous example, incorporating self-criticism: was your
journey really necessary, your little poem worth writing? But the last
two lines can also be seen as a slap in the face for the imperceptive
reader:
WATER MUSIC
The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.
Water music,
loud in the clearing
ott the boats,
birds, leaves.
