Robert Creeley’s “The Tunnel” is short and difficult, taking aim at three weighty subjects: love, time, and death. I think I’ve read it twenty times now, and I still don’t grasp the whole meaning. I hold on to one stanza and another slips away. I love its concise complexity, and cleverness. Just look at the first line: “Tonight, nothing is long enough–” — the line ends with a long (em-) dash! The line itself is drawn out, lengthened by its punctuation and the pause that follows the end of every line in poetry. What a mind at work.

Read it here, and please tell me what you make of it!