Collected Poems

by Robert Bly

  So much suffering has been stored in the amygdala

  That we know it won’t be long before we put

  Our heads down on the chopping block again.

  Our thighs still remember all those smoky nights

  When we crouched for hours on the dusty plains

  Holding small-boned mammals into the fire.

  How is it possible that so many nights of suffering

  Could be summed up by a sketch in brown ink

  Of Christ sitting at the table with Judas near?

  THE PELICANS AT WHITE HORSE KEY

  Occasionally spreading their wings to the sun, pelicans

  Dive for fish from dawn to dusk. The Lord of This World

  Is a painter working at night in a dark room.

  Earth is the place where we’ve agreed to throw

  Away the gifts that Adam’s grandfather gave us

  During the Dark Time before eternity was born.

  The lover’s body belongs to ruined earth.

  The scattered stars belong to the Milky Way.

  The potato field belongs to early night.

  The Monitor Lizard is a child of the Mother,

  And a favorite child. The Monitor holds a snake

  Immobile for an hour and then eats.

  We know it’s good not to have sharp opinions;

  But would you still think so much of Noah

  If he had thrown away his bag of nails?

  Four times this month I have dreamt I am

  A murderer; and I am. These lines are paper boats

  Set out to float on the sea of repentance.

  FLAMENCO SINGERS IN GRANADA

  The singers will never stop protesting against the rain.

  The singers will never stop complaining about the sea.

  A thousand oak leaves fall on the embezzler’s grave.

  All of us crying out in Granada are calling

  In the Macedonians whose sons and daughters

  Died during the night when God was born.

  The Mother and son have lived and died for centuries

  Before us; some suffering has been steady since Noah.

  It is our Babylonian hands that are clapping tonight.

  I want the ant to bury the church tower tonight!

  I want the church wall to stagger tonight!

  I want the ant to gobble the black sugar down!

  If you’re still alive, tell us again how Jesus

  Forgave Judas, and how Judas buried his coins

  In a barnyard trampled by sacrificial goats.

  We will never end the crying deep in the throat.

  Whatever happened the night when God was born,

  We will never stop complaining about the sea.

  THE HORSES COMING UP BEHIND

  Have you noticed the horses galloping past us?

  Perhaps they are horses with no riders at all.

  Perhaps they are riders who have turned into horses.

  A world without horses coming up behind us

  Seems absurd to me now. Ride faster!

  Why did I let so many centuries go by?

  You know how difficult it is to receive a human

  Body these days at birth! Don’t lose this chance!

  Clamp your legs tight against the saddle.

  You’ve given me a bridle and a saddle and a horse

  That can go on for miles. But it’s always possible

  That I am the rider destined to lose the race.

  It doesn’t matter now. We don’t care whether

  Anna and Vronsky find their way home or not,

  Because there is so much joy in losing the race.

  So many superb riders have already run this course!

  Look at all these riders on fast horses

  Going by with their thin cheekbones in the night!

  III

  BRAHMS

  It must be that my early friendship with defeat

  Has given me affection for the month of August.

  The potato fields belong to early night.

  So many times as a boy I sat in the dirt

  Among dry cornstalks that gave assurances

  Every hour that Francis has his ear to the night.

  Columbus’s letters tell us that we will receive

  The gifts that mariners all receive at the end—

  Memories of gold and a grave in the sand.

  The shadow of a friend’s hand gives us

  Promises similar to those we received from

  The light under the door as our mother came near.

  Each of us is a Jacob weeping for Joseph.

  We are the sparrow that flies through the warrior’s

  Hall and back out into the falling snow.

  I don’t know why these images should please me

  So much; an angel said: “In the last moment before night

  Brahms will show you how loyal the notes are.”

  JACOB AND RACHEL

  The harsh bark on the calendar oaks and the bowl

  Of milk spilled on the floor tell us that the lover

  Long-parted will arrive too late for the funeral.

  We’ll never be able to remedy the wounds

  That Columbus made in the sea; how could we keep

  All the promises we’ve made to the dark angels?

  The Egyptian teacher keeps asking why the dead man

  Reaches for the wrong Bible, why the pelican

  Mistakes her nest on the morning of Easter.

  Jacob will fly once more for seven years toward

  Rachel’s shawl; once more he’ll set spotted twigs

  At the spring where the ewes drink at nightfall.

  Put more sugar into the watercolorer’s tea!

  Don’t forbid the horses to gallop into the storm!

  Please keep all frogs alive in the hill pond!

  There are so many mistakes in creation we cannot

  Correct. As parents, we may never be able to say

  The true blessing we want to give to our children.

  For Bridget and Ben

  WHAT TO DO WITH THE GARDEN

  I’ll just stay here. You go on. Leave me behind

  In this wrecked garden that Joseph forgot to tend.

  I have been here since my mother first laid out my clothes.

  A group of women keep reminding me whom I love.

  They stand with lifted arms in the orchard. They say,

  “Leave this ruined garden you love so much.”

  I believe repentance no larger than a county

  Can become a continent of forgiveness.

  I believe the Seal has not been set on this door.

  Perhaps even my feeble faith may gain me

  Mercy. I do believe a pebble on the road

  Can throw a shadow a hundred miles long at dusk.

  Because I’m absent when I’m present, and present

  When I’m absent, because I drop my eyes to the floor,

  I’ve had seventy years living in this ruined garden.

  Robert, give up your longing for a different childhood.

  You’ll recall that Fabre when he was seventy

  Found for his insects one acre of stony ground.

  THE SHOEHORN

  It’s odd that the shoehorn has been able to preserve

  Its shape over centuries. At dusk my ignorance

  Slips away and hides its eggs in the woods.

  Everyone knows when a great man or woman

  Is about to die, and fights that. Many of the Jews

  Wanted to speak privately to Pilate.

  Our parents’ faces at dawn have so much grief

  That they resemble those stone faces on Easter

  Island, gazing toward some missing Friday.

  After every one of our wars, the newly dead

  Hold out a cup to us. What can we do

  But testify to a thousand years of darkness?

  Iron keeps calling to earth, and earth to iron.

&n
bsp; If you throw a knife high in the air,

  The knife soon curves over and sticks in the soil.

  I guessed how difficult my selfishness would

  Be when I heard the sound the hitch makes

  When it slides off the drawbar onto the ground.

  SINGING THE SAME THROATY NOTE

  I cannot stop weeping over the thousand nights

  When I was unable to weep. I am a farm boy

  Who follows tracks that lead away from the tractor.

  My life failed on the very day I was born.

  The long woolen coats of the Dark Angels

  Brushed out the words in the snow as they walked past.

  The tabla player must have lived through and abandoned

  So many lives for the music to sound like this.

  His hands are bailing tons of water from the sea.

  Women with their newly washed hair, bodies

  Born again and again with new souls, boards

  Leaning against the fence, what does it all mean?

  And women suffer the most—between every boy child,

  So many rugs are woven, and then taken apart.

  The wine of a hundred bowls is poured out on the ground.

  Robert, you keep insisting on the same throaty note.

  I don’t know how you get permission for that.

  You are like an old man gone mad on a ship.

  For Marcus Wise

  THE PISTACHIO NUT

  God crouches at night over a single pistachio.

  The vastness of the Wind River Range in Wyoming

  Has no more grandeur than the waist of a child.

  Haydn tells us that we’ve inherited a mansion

  On one of the Georgia sea islands. Then the last

  Note burns down the courthouse and all the records.

  Everyone who presses down the strings with his own fingers

  Is on his way to Heaven; the pain in the fingertips

  Goes toward healing the crimes the hands have done.

  Let’s give up the notion that great music is a way

  Of praising human beings. It’s good to agree that one drop

  Of ocean water holds all of Kierkegaard’s prayers.

  When I hear the sitar give out the story of its life,

  I know it is telling me how to behave—while kissing

  The dear one’s feet, to weep over my wasted life.

  Robert, this poem will soon be over; and you

  Are like a twig trembling on the lip of the falls.

  Like a note of music, you are about to become nothing.

  LISTENING TO OLD MUSIC

  THE RUDRA VINA

  I don’t know what would bring me closer to you.

  Maybe slowing down this music, maybe waking

  In the middle of the night, maybe diving for the bottom.

  Maybe silence. The speed of the soul leaping over fences

  Brings the toe forward. At other times, a book resting

  On my chest takes me backward into my mother’s arms.

  The ache in the fold of my arm must be the old

  Sadness that the newborn feels when he senses

  That his father has come to claim him for this world.

  Don’t ask me whether to take Plato’s side

  Or Freud’s. Just come over here and help me

  Burn my books so we can move to Argentina.

  The drum insists that the night we die

  Will be a long night. The Rudra Vina goes on

  Insisting that there is not enough suffering.

  Well, music, go on growling about God.

  I am rubbing my big face against my little face,

  I am a blackbird flying through the night.

  For Wesley and Sunil

  HIDING IN A DROP OF WATER

  It is early morning, and death has forgotten us for

  A while. Darkness owns the house, but I am alive.

  I am ready to praise all the great musicians.

  Whatever happens to me will also happen to you.

  Surely you must have realized this from hearing

  The way the strings cry out no matter who hits them.

  From the great oak trees in the yard in October,

  Leaves fall for hours every morning. Every night

  A thousand wrinkled faces look up at the stars.

  When Rabia’s donkey fell dead in the desert, she shouted

  To God, “Is that the way you treat an old woman?”

  The donkey stood up, and they went on to the Meeting.

  It is this reaching toward the Kaaba that keeps us glad.

  It is this way of hiding inside a drop of water

  That lets the hidden face become visible to everyone.

  Gautama said that when the Great Ferris Wheel

  Stops turning, you will still be way up

  There, swinging in your seat and laughing.

  FOR ROBERT MOTHERWELL

  Hunter, give me my horse. I am going into sorrow again.

  I’m looking for the dead people hidden in the grass.

  Help me up. I am crazy about suffering again.

  I see that I am walking in a dead man’s shoes.

  I have been born so many times as an orphan. The thin fiddle

  Strings stretched tight have saved me from suicide.

  When Robert Motherwell lifts up his two black clouds

  So that they float a few feet from each other,

  I know grief is the one who tells me what to do.

  The soul can never get enough of the taste of its sorrow.

  I am a horse throwing his head sideways, galloping

  Away from the place where the happy people live.

  I don’t care anymore whether I am educated or not.

  We have learned so much pain by not going to school.

  Our lines suggest the luck lost between heartbeats.

  We who love Motherwell’s black clouds may be insane,

  But at least we know where to feed. We are close

  Relatives of the birds that followed Jesus to Egypt.

  LISTENING TO SHAHRAM NAZERI

  I know the horses keep galloping for miles.

  I know the ants keep lifting their feelers to heaven

  And planning new triumphs, but it’s already too late!

  When Nazeri sings, I don’t care if the Second

  Adam comes down or not; I don’t care if my words

  Get you to cry or not—it’s already too late.

  The smell of coffee spreads out from the fire.

  The wild-haired old women sing over the coffin.

  Go on complaining and praying. It’s already too late!

  I know sweet vowels and inescapable rhythms.

  I know how sweet it is when a young woman is here

  And the old men think of God; but it’s already too late.

  My tongue never becomes bitter because my mouth

  Keeps holding the grief pipe between my teeth.

  Go on and conquer bitterness; it’s already too late.

  Here I am; I am all alone. It’s early morning.

  I am so happy. How can so much grandeur

  Live beneath my skin? Go on asking; it’s already too late!

  IV

  MAILING EVIDENCE TO THE PROSECUTORS

  Every leaf in a storm points in the same direction.

  The story of an affair is the story of our life.

  The lover’s body always tilts toward earth.

  Lovers sometimes hide things under their pillows.

  During our first year, we saved maps of Bali,

  The Boundary Waters, and the Maltese lowlands.

  We didn’t know enough to move into a house.

  We slept out in the barley fields night after night,

  Watching the stars go over the edge of the world.

  We know that lovers travel to distant countries,

  Sometimes before they meet. We have agreed

  We knew each other a hundr
ed years ago.

  When we had mailed evidence to the prosecutors

  Three times, they understood that we were destined

  For prison. When judges saw us coming, they clapped.

  The two of us were blind, but we did drive our horses

  Over the endless prairie. You judges, tell me

  If you’ve ever seen wagons that traveled so far.

  WAKING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

  I want to be true to what I have heard. It was