Collected Poems

by Robert Bly

  They welcomed him, gave him tea, brought

  His donkey to the stable for oats and water.

  “Stay for supper,” they said. How glad he was!

  They drank tea for hours. Dinner came.

  They all ate happily and began to dance.

  The Godseekers sang two lines over and over:

  “Compared to God’s, our song is only a bray;

  How beautiful is the scent of a thousand hairs!”

  In the morning, he said, “Could I have my donkey?”

  They said: “What do you mean, your donkey?

  You ate the meal! You danced. You sang the songs!”

  The donkey we have loved for years may be killed

  And cooked one day while we go on singing.

  So don’t write a single poem without gratitude.

  PITZEEM AND THE MARE

  Let’s tell the other story about Pitzeem and his horse.

  When the One He Loved moved to the mountains,

  He bought a mare and a saddle and started out.

  He rode all day with fire coming out of his ears,

  And all night. When the reins fell, the mare knew it right

  Away. She turned and headed straight for the barn.

  No one had told Pitzeem, but his horse had left

  A new foal back in the stable. She thought of nothing

  All day but his sweet face with its long nose.

  Pitzeem! Pitzeem! How much time you’ve lost!

  He put the mountain between the mare’s ears again.

  He slapped his own face; he was a good lover.

  And every night he fell asleep once more. Friends,

  Our desire to reach our true wife is great,

  But the mare’s love for her child is also great. Please

  Understand this. The journey was a three-day trip,

  But it took Pitzeem thirty years. You and I have been

  Riding for years, but we’re still only a day from home.

  THE COUNTRY ROADS

  Last night in my dream, I drank tea steeped

  In iron that had failed; at the bottom

  I saw ruined tines of an old pitchfork.

  Everything we leave behind is testimony,

  Even our nail-clippings. Then my old clothes

  Are testimony of my love of nakedness.

  During the months everyone spoke badly of us,

  Then I had the fiercest love for you.

  People still try to encourage us by speaking badly.

  So many times this week I’ve felt like weeping.

  It’s natural, like the cry of Canada Geese

  Who call to each other over the darkening reeds.

  In my early poems I praised so many lost things.

  The way the crickets’ cries in October carried

  Them into the night sky felt right to me.

  Every way of knowing is blessed by bootleggers.

  Because the government does not allow delight

  To be sold, you have to find it on the country roads.

  ISEULT AND THE BADGER

  The ink we write with seeps in through our fingers.

  What we call reason is the way the parasite

  Learns to live in the saint’s intestinal tract.

  Even the finest reason still contains the darkness

  From feathers packed together; General Patton

  Was a salmon who grew large in the Etruscan pool.

  All our language is woven from animal hair.

  The badgers and the thrushes soak up the stain of separation,

  Just as lanolin makes the shearer’s hands soft.

  The old thinkers of quiddity remind us

  Of the fear the hogs feel hanging by their hind legs;

  For we know our throats are open to the unfaithful.

  “I was climbing on the sounds of my lover’s

  Name toward God,” Iseult said. “Then a badger ran past.

  When I said, ‘Oh badger,’ I fell to earth.”

  Perhaps if we used no words at all in poems

  We could continue to climb, but things seep in.

  We are porous to the piled leaves on the ground.

  IN PRAISE OF SCHOLARS

  Furry shadows are bringing gifts to our door.

  We have nowhere to live but with the moles.

  We’ll have to pay the mortgage on the house of sorrow.

  This world is roofed with the shingles of parting.

  Children slide off their mothers’ knees;

  The door leads inward to silent wives and husbands.

  My father wrote numbers down all his life

  With a short, blunt pencil. Even Aristotle

  Found himself caught in his dark reason.

  It’s too late to move now, Friends. We’ll have to pay

  For years—yes!—and the interest rate is fixed.

  It will require our lives, as it did our parents.

  Hundreds of scholars work in the basement.

  They are good students of the ten thousand things.

  Without them we would be at war forever.

  There is only one mortgage and so many forms of payment!

  There is one peace and so many forms of war.

  The furry shadows are bringing gifts to the door.

  THE FISH IN THE WINDOW

  “The fish are in the fishman’s window,” the grain

  Is in the hall, “the hunter shouts as the pheasant falls.”

  That shout rises from deep in Adam’s chest.

  The great trawlers pull in the shining bodies.

  Horses’ teeth rip night from sleepy day.

  We are all like Nebuchadnezzar on his knees.

  Because the greedy soul gained its teeth in the womb,

  More than one twin died in the safest place;

  We fell into the doctor’s hands with haunted eyes.

  We inherited much when we inherited teeth.

  We will never have one whole day of peace.

  An old horse will die or a house will burn.

  Each evening we reach for our neighbor’s food.

  Each night we crawl into imaginary beds;

  Each midnight we visit the darkness with Saturn.

  We can go on sitting in the Meeting House,

  But the greedy one in us will still survive.

  One cry from the crow contains a thousand more.

  MONTSERRAT

  Why God allowed Montserrat to fall

  Is not explained, nor why the Queen of Cattle

  Drove my one calf into the slaughterhouse.

  My poems are sad. How could it be otherwise?

  The judge and the criminal live in my own house.

  I come constantly upon secret court proceedings.

  Why do we achieve organization only in wartime?

  I want to know why so many plays of Sophocles were lost,

  And why God becomes an ox and eats the grass each night.

  When I was twenty-six, I sent the words that fed me

  To be killed, along with vowels that joined me to others;

  My calf of language was cut up and thrown into the ditch.

  My small talent was weighted down beneath the water,

  And the lungs I breathed with were filled with lies.

  If I had been human, it would have been worse.

  That is what separation is like: I know it now.

  I had only will to save me from drowning.

  I was unfaithful even to Infidelity.

  THE FRENCH GENERALS

  Whenever Jesus appears at the murky well,

  I am there with my five hundred husbands.

  It takes Jesus all day to mention their names.

  The growing soul longs for mastery, but

  The small men inside pull it into misery.

  It is the nature of shame to have many children.

  Earth’s name is “Abundance of Desires.” The serpent

  Sends out his split tongue and waves it


  In the air scented with many dark Napoleons.

  The general ends his life in a small cottage

  With damp sheets and useless French franc notes;

  He keeps his old plans of attack under the mattress.

  I say to the serpent: “This is your house.”

  I bring in newspapers to make his nest cozy.

  It’s the nature of wanting to have many wives.

  So many rafters in lifejackets are pulled down

  Till their toes touch the bottom of the Rogue River.

  Wherever there is water there is someone drowning.

  THE BATTLE AT YPRES, 1915

  Tammuz, bright with feathers, goes to the Underworld.

  The peat-bog man sleeps on his slanted face.

  Not to worry; it means that spring has come.

  Naked men crawl into tunnels to retrieve the giant

  Snakes. They don’t resist if pulled out backwards.

  Ah, friends, the world pulls us out backwards.

  Some say that every bit of iron we pull

  Out of the earth, and shape, we have to pay for.

  At Ypres we paid dearly for the Bentley car.

  Some greedy part hankers for disaster, for things

  To go wrong, for the war to start. Many people

  Are disappointed when the bombing is canceled.

  Events at times turn out exactly wrong with us.

  The Magi are misled by a satellite in the night;

  And a rabbit sacrifices people during our Easter.

  How happy the Europeans were in 1914!

  It seemed as though spring had come at last!

  Our gaiety the morning of war is momentary.

  For Martín Prechtel

  THE RAFT OF GREEN LOGS

  Poetry is an occupation fit for slaughterers

  And knife-wielders. Life on earth needs many kills

  To engender the soft leaps of the cheetah.

  God made me tender; but writing poetry,

  With its furry herd of images that have

  To be saved or murdered, has made me fierce.

  The Lord of this World condemns half his friends

  To death. Music testifies to that. Notes

  Wave their arms and sink into the cold Atlantic.

  During the years I called to Rilke and Boehme,

  I hung onto small branches; I went over

  The waterfall still holding the twig of reason.

  It’s all right if we tumble down the falls.

  I remember how many lambs died on the farm.

  Our desires reform themselves overnight anyway.

  My affections were stuffed into the giant’s mouth.

  Some marriages are rafts. I saw water between

  The green logs. You could not have saved me.

  IV

  THE FIVE INNS

  When I cry, I want everyone else to cry.

  I wanted to live at the edge of things as a boy.

  A thousand geese gawping were just right for me.

  A thousand red-eyed dragons live in a drop

  Of clear water, all guarding the same treasure.

  A hundred Jesuses are walking near Emmaus.

  What are the five inns of the Dark One?

  Smoke, fire, wind, mud, and darkness.

  Each of these casinos is delicious to the gambler.

  My greedy soul and I share the same room.

  When I see a book written two thousand years

  Ago, I check to see if my name is mentioned.

  Men and women like me who put their trust

  In the dusky footsteps of the setting stars

  Have secret accomplices in the world of night.

  Yesterday’s Caribbean storm rose when a gnat

  Lifted its wing; and there are hundreds of Platos

  And Ibn Arabis teaching the pupil of the eye.

  THE BAAL SHEM AND FRANCIS BACON

  “The Five Ways of Knowing the World” worries me.

  The thrush has so many tiny feathers around its bill

  That a thousand ways of knowing might be closer.

  Some old souls living in the Divine House felt

  Such fear at the amount of darkness God

  Left inside man during the Second Creation,

  That they hid themselves away in an inner room,

  And never looked down at those tall grasses

  Where Adam sat killing rabbits by the first fire.

  When the Baal Shem was about to be born,

  His soul was chosen from among that group of souls

  Who had turned their eyes away from the window.

  That’s why the Baal Shem could travel a hundred

  Miles in two hours and arrive just in time

  To give the poor daughter money for her marriage.

  That’s why Francis Bacon could never understand

  How the world allows itself to be loved, nor how

  Joseph’s shirt could come back from Egypt.

  NATCHEZ INNS

  Let’s just stay here weeping over old grain.

  We’ve spent hours asleep, and other hours,

  Dozens of them, hitched to the black horse.

  We love most those hours that carry the burnt flavor

  Of the stars; but we have to have praised God

  For hours before the burnt minute appears.

  Whenever we set a foot down, it is caught.

  The steps we take resemble those Natchez inns

  Where each pillow covers an open knife.

  The bird can sing for hours through its beak!

  It picks its grain carefully. But we, the sons

  Of forgetfulness, eat the flesh that died shouting.

  We have to fight the Agent of Disappointment a year

  To love one disappearing star for a moment, because

  Any star may carry us close to Orion’s belt.

  Be frank with me: Tell me how many dead hours

  You have eaten, whom you have killed

  While waiting for the Lord of this planet to fall asleep.

  THE CABBAGES OF CHEKHOV

  Some gamblers abandon carefully built houses

  In order to live near water. It’s all right. One day

  On the river is worth a thousand nights on land.

  It is our attraction to ruin that saves us;

  And disaster, friends, brings us health. Chekhov

  Shocks the heavens with his dark cabbages.

  William Blake knew that fierce old man,

  Irritable, chained, and majestic, who bends over

  To measure with his calipers the ruin of the world.

  It takes so little to make me happy tonight!

  Four hours of singing will do it, if we remember

  How much of our life is a ruin, and agree to that.

  Butterflies spend all afternoon concentrating

  On the buddleia bush; human beings take in

  The fragrance of a thousand nights of ruin.

  We planted fields of sorrow near the Tigris.

  The Harvesters will come in at the end of time

  And tell us that the crop of ruin has been great.

  THE EEL IN THE CAVE

  Our veins are open to shadow, and our fingertips

  Porous to murder. It’s only the inattention

  Of the prosecutors that lets us go to lunch.

  Reading my old letters I notice a secret will.

  It’s as if another person had planned my life.

  Even in the dark, someone is hitching the horses.

  That doesn’t mean I have done things well.

  I have found so many ways to disgrace

  Myself, and throw a dark cloth over my head.

  Why is it our fault if we fall into desire?

  The eel poking his head from his undersea cave

  Entices the tiny soul falling out of Heaven.

  So many invisible angels work to keep

  Us from drowning; so many hands reach

  Down
to pull the swimmer from the water.

  Even though the District Attorney keeps me

  Well in mind, grace allows me sometimes

  To slip into the Alhambra by night.

  REMBRANDT’S ETCHINGS

  The cross-hatching brings the night into the day,

  Just as the donkey brings its cargo into Egypt.

  I am a beggar reaching out my hand for darkness.

  The cat can’t explain how much the mouse loves