Written by
Robert Bly |
Let's count the bodies over again.
If we could only make the bodies smaller
The size of skulls
We could make a whole plain white with skulls in the moonlight!
If we could only make the bodies smaller
Maybe we could get
A whole year's kill in front of us on a desk!
If we could only make the bodies smaller
We could fit
A body into a finger-ring for a keepsake forever.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
As I drive my parents home through the snow
their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.
I call over the cliff
only snow answers.
They talk quietly
of hauling water of eating an orange
of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.
When they open the door of their house they disappear.
And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it through miles and miles of silence?
They sit so close to each other¡as if pressed together by the snow.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane!
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Written by
Robert Bly |
Nigh and day arrive and day after day goes by
And what is old remains old and what is young remains young and grows old.
The lumber pile does not grow younger nor the two-by-fours lose their darkness
but the old tree goes on the barn stands without help so many years;
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.
The horse steps up swings on one leg turns its body
the chicken flapping claws onto the roost its wings whelping and walloping
but what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and the dark.
And slowly the kind man comes closer loses his rage sits down at table.
So I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness
when you sit drawing or making books stapled with messages to the world
or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table with small tea carefully poured.
So we pass our time together calm and delighted.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body
Bringing fish up near the sun
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!
I have wandered in a face for hours
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.
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Written by
Antonio Machado |
The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.
"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses.
"
"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.
"
"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.
"
the wind left.
And I wept.
And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"
Translated by Robert Bly
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Written by
Robert Bly |
1
Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.
2
Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of grass.
3
The strong leaves of the box-elder tree
Plunging in the wind call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant
And live forever like the dust.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula Montana utterly happy.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
In rainy September when leaves grow down to the dark
I put my forehead down to the damp seaweed-smelling sand.
What can we do but choose? The only way for human beings
is to choose.
The fern has no choice but to live;
for this crime it receives earth water and night.
we close the door.
"I have no claim on you.
"
Dusk comes.
"The love I have had with you is enough.
"
We know we could live apart from the flock.
The sheldrake floats apart from the flock.
The oaktree puts out leaves alone on the lonely hillside.
Men and women before us have accomplished this.
I would see you and you me once a year.
We would be two kernels and not be planted.
We stay in the room door closed lights out.
I weep with you without shame and without honor.
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Written by
Robert Bly |
Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six
feet from the house .
.
.
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more
books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no
more bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a
party, and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls
leaving the church.
It will not come closer
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch
nothing, and are safe.
The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
room where the coffin stands.
He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.
And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on
through the unattached heavens alone.
The toe of the shoe pivots
in the dust .
.
.
And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back
down the hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,
and did not climb the hill.
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