For the Graduation [Bolinas School, June 11, 1971] by Robert Creeley

For the Graduation [Bolinas School, June 11, 1971]

by Robert Creeley

for Sarah

Pretension has it

you can't

get back

what's gone by.

Yet I don't believe it.

The sky

in this place

stays here

and the sun

comes, or goes

and comes again,

on the same day.

We live in a circle,

older or younger,

we go round

and around on this earth.

I was trying to remember

what it

was like

at your age.

I will start by being very honest: I would NOT read this at a graduation or put it into a graduation card. Why? Because the focus is really on the speaker, not the graduate. Is this how many of us feel watching young people graduate? Of course! We cannot help but think back to our own youth. But that doesn't need to be told to them. (I also have an issue about that first sentence, but let's just skip down a wee bit.)

The sky, the sun, the earth--I love what Creeley does here. It's very simple and uses his typical line breaks, and they slow the reader down. I feel like here the speaker is actually addressing the graduating class and also those on the stands, as well as the school staff.

We are all here together, day in and day out. But Creeley has us in a circle, a description that intensifies the cycle of life, as well as the shapes of the sun and the earth and the revolution and rotation of the earth. It also harkens back to the sun going back and forth.

I spent a good part of my writing life in my early writing life composing poetry with very short, Creeley-esque lines. They seem of a time now, and I know a lot of poets HATE them. But I have a soft spot for them, as I was obviously reading a lot of Creeley and others who wrote in the same form in my formative years. In this poem, though, I think they are very effective. Any time we are talking about aging, life and death, memory, etc. we are talking about time, and again, those lines slow us down. It is very effective here.

And lest you think I hate the end of this poem, I do not. I love it. It is very powerful and relatable and sad and meaningful. It is just not about Sarah, who I assume is the graduating student, and who whom this poem was written. So maybe schools could hand out copies of this to all of the adults in the graduation ceremony audience, and let the students have a "look to the future--it is bright and you can all be winners" platitude.