The Measure

The Measure


by Robert Creeley


I cannot
move backward
or forward.
I am caught


in the time
as measure.
What we think
of we think of—


of no other reason
we think than
just to think—
each for himself.



Robert Creeley, “The Measure” from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975. Copyright © 1992 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press, www.ucpress.edu.