by Robert Bly
The fall is like a bare writing desk.
The ash tree outside my window
Has no leaves, and Ignatow is gone. . . .
But my pen still moves freely
On this paper. And Vera, where is she?
In a nursing home in Newtonville.
Lamplight shines on the floorboards.
No response. Can I read anything I want
Now, how about Stalingrad? Go ahead.
Those I am dear to, those dear to me . . .
I can stand and let my palms sweep
Up over my stomach furnace—
You know, the pot-bellied stove
The Taoists talk about. And maybe
A plume of energy does climb,
As they say, up the spine. The turtles
On the Galápagos don’t feel old.
They breathe only once a minute.
THE OLD FISHING LINES
Sometimes I get in my car on a late October day
And drive north. Everything that I haven’t done—
Raking, visiting—all those reasons for not living—
Fall away. I pass half-abandoned summer towns,
Admiring the shadows thrown by bare trees
On bare lakes where cold waves lap the sand.
The renegade minister—the one they all gossip
About—would see those waves too, after throwing
His Sunday hat out the window. He’ll be
All right. Death hugs the underside of oak leaves.
In each cove you pass you will see
What you had to say no to once.
It’s all right if you walk down to the shore.
You’ll feel time passing, the way the summer has.
You’ll see the little holes that raindrops leave in fine sand
And the old fishing lines driven up on the rocks.
WALKING OUT IN THE MORNING
In the city, whenever you walk out,
The air hits you first . . . abundant,
Nonhuman. Where has it been?
It’s like your first college course,
But with better teachers. Farther on,
Your legs begin to feel the cold.
And you learn more. It’s like
Graduate school, in which
Your boots keep slipping on
The loose rock as you make
Your way upward through
The shale of the great poems.
If you keep walking anyway,
You’ll soon be on top. You’ll know
You’ve read a lot of Germans
When your boots are full of snow.
A POETRY READING IN MARYLAND
For Lucille Clifton
You’d have been surprised at lower Maryland.
This far south we could still sense Washington:
George’s powdered hair in the shad blossoms,
So many criminals wanting pardon from Lincoln.
We all admired the great trees, leaning out over
The bay, the English grandeur in the wide lawns.
We came by train to read poems. All of us
Were carrying something—it was hard to say what:
Perhaps luck, or perhaps some recklessness
About truth, or perhaps just a few small stones
We kept in our pockets giving off a fragrance
The students didn’t get enough of at home.
We confessed a little—we had to—having brought
So much that was hidden with us, but our intent
Was not to confess. Our intent was to shine a little,
Suggest that we had done well, and drop
A hint about our childhood in the hope that
We too would receive some sort of pardon.
THE LOST TRAPPER
Each time the soprano and the tenor
Kneel and sing to each other,
Somewhere else on stage the baritone
Is about to die.
The Alaskan trapper finds
Blood on his arm, his radio
Dead, and new snow
Falling on the branches.
I don’t know why the grasshopper
Doesn’t try to wiggle
Out from the bird’s claw,
But he doesn’t move.
Just forget the idea that
Someone will come and save
You whenever cedars begin
Making that low sound.
STARTING A POEM
You’re alone. Then there’s a knock
On the door. It’s a word. You
Bring it in. Things go
OK for a while. But this word
Has relatives. Soon
They turn up. None of them work.
They sleep on the floor, and they steal
Your tennis shoes.
You started it; you weren’t
Content to leave things alone.
Now the den is a mess, and the
Remote is gone.
That’s what being married
Is like! You never receive your
Wife only, but the
Madness of her family.
Now see what’s happened?
Where is your car? You won’t
Be able to find
The keys for a week.
I HAVE DAUGHTERS AND I HAVE SONS
1
Who is out there at six a.m.? The man
Throwing newspapers onto the porch,
And the roaming souls suddenly
Drawn down into their sleeping bodies.
2
Wild words of Jacob Boehme
Go on praising the human body,
But heavy words of the ascetics
Sway in the fall gales.
3
Do I have a right to my poems?
To my jokes? To my loves?
Oh foolish man, knowing nothing—
Less than nothing—about desire.
4
I have daughters and I have sons.
When one of them lays a hand
On my shoulder, shining fish
Turn suddenly in the deep sea.
5
At this age, I especially love dawn
On the sea, stars above the trees,
Pages in The Threefold Life,
And the pale faces of baby mice.
6
Perhaps our life is made of struts
And paper, like those early
Wright Brothers planes. Neighbors
Run along holding the wing-tips.
7
I do love Yeats’s fierceness
As he jumped into a poem,
And that lovely calm in my father’s
Hands, as he buttoned his coat.
THE MOURNING DOVE’S CALL
The mourning dove’s call woke me
In the still night, when it was still night
To me. Those sounds were older even
Than the box radio, and they said,
“Your mother is walking along the road.
I saw your dead father last night
Near the cottonwood grove.”
I slept all night in a house with dear
Friends asleep in a neighboring room.
The call woke me in the still night.
For Peggy and Frank
TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY
I have been talking into the ear of a donkey.
I have so much to say! And the donkey can’t wait
To feel my breath stirring the immense oats
Of his ears. “What has happened to the spring,”
I cry, “and our legs that were so joyful
In the bobblings of April?” “Oh, never mind
About all that,” the donkey
Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you
Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”
WANTING SUMPTUOUS HEAVENS
No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bon
e guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.
III
A FAMILY THING
I guess it’s an old family
Thing. Someone is Napoleon,
Someone is sacrificed. Call in
Jesus, if you don’t get it.
Pick up that cookie on the floor.
Let the hired man go on
Wasting his life. He’ll find
Someone to waste it with.
It’s like a game in which
The game itself loses.
It’s like a picnic in which
The basket eats the food.
It’s all right if I go to college;
Most people don’t. It’s all right
To end up bringing your own
Father home. Just be quiet.
Some powers are stronger
Than we are. They never say
When the battle is.
It was last night. You lost.
THE WATER TANK
It’s late fall, and the box-elder leaves are gone.
Snow falls on the horses among their hay bales
And on the water tank overturned for winter.
The horses bend their necks toward the white ground to eat.
THE BOX OF CHOCOLATES
He always knew where he had been, and he remembered
The box elder in the fencepost, looked down on men
Who couldn’t see the storm coming. He’d learned
To live with the way his bait went deeper.
My mother kept her spirits high with little jobs.
He bought her a heart-shaped box of chocolates
Once a year. One life, one woman,
That was God’s rule, and he didn’t like it much.
KEEPING QUIET
A friend of mine says that every war
Is some violence in childhood coming closer.
Those whoppings in the shed weren’t a joke.
On the whole, it didn’t turn out well.
This has been going on for thousands
Of years! It doesn’t change. Something
Happened to me, and I can’t tell
Anyone, so it will happen to you.
THE DAY THE DOCK COMES IN
So much happens when the dock comes in.
Oak leaves are underfoot. They crackle
As we carry oars to the newly painted shed.
The lake is explaining its early life.
My four hanging apples are gone, I don’t
Know where. Little adjustments are every-
Where. We’ll have to get ready to read
Seneca—the bookcase will explain.
It’s time now to pull up the posts,
Drag the dock in, pile the sections,
Lift the boat on top, and see how
Much subtlety is lost in explaining things.
MORNING PAJAMAS
When you’ve slept all night in a warm bed, sometimes
You’ll find a punky fragrance in your pajamas.
It’s a bit low-life, but satisfying.
It’s some sort of companionable warmth
That your balls created during the night.
It’s a mammal delight, related
To the cow’s udder, one
Of the nouns of this earth.
Don’t be ashamed, friends;
Don’t throw your pajamas in the washer,
Don’t open the window;
Forget the pilgrims!
Think how sweet it is
That knowledge should come
From a source so deep.
THAT PROBLEM IN THE FAMILY
I don’t know how to say it.
We were bumblers—nothing
Was ever clear. Why the war
Started . . . or why the car didn’t . . .
We couldn’t do it. Probably
Some people understood, but
We just got on the tractor.
We had no one to call meetings.
“Why do you drink?” No one
Asked that, except my mother. She
Did, and the rest of us said, “I don’t
Want to be on her side.”
IV
HEARD WHISPERS
The spider sways in October winds; she hears the whisk
Of the bat’s foot as it leaves the branch, the groan
The bear makes far out on the Labrador ice,
The cry of the wren as the hurricane takes
The house, the cones falling, the sigh of the nun
As she dies, the whisper Jesus makes to
The woman drawing water, the nearly silent weeping
Of bones eager to be laid away in the grave.
THE SLIM FIR SEEDS
The nimble ovenbird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir seeds, all of these
Make clear how much we want the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm.
But that’s impossible. We are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
For Micah and Chiemi
THE BIG-NOSTRILLED MOOSE
Horses go on eating the Apostle Island ferns,
Also sheep and goats; also the big-nostrilled moose
Who knocks down the common bushes
In his longing for earthly pleasure.
The moose’s great cock floats in the lily pads.
That image calms us. His nose calms us.
Slowly, obstinately, we retrieve the pleasures
The Fathers, angry with the Gnostics, threw away.
TURKISH PEARS
Sometimes a poem has her own husband
And children, her nooks and gardens and kitchens,
Her stairs, and those sweet-armed serving boys
Who carry veal in shiny copper pans.
Some poems do give plebeian sweets
Tastier than the chocolates French diners
Eat at evening, and old pleasures abundant
As Turkish pears picked in the garden in August.
THOREAU AS A LOVER
Dear old Thoreau abandoned his scandalous life
To live among the sand cranes and the ants.
He wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, but he
Kept company with his handsome language.
Each day he walked alone in the woods,
Bringing along a lover’s book which told which flower
Was likely to blossom today. Well, well;
Beyond that, he lived extravagantly alone.
IN A TIME OF LOSSES
We don’t want to alarm the heron who’s
Guarding the cranberry bog from frost.
But so many hares have been eaten by weasels;
The losses go on night after night.
Foxes slip through the bushes at dusk.
So much we care for has been carried off.
The airs and ars we hear in this poem
Belong to the hare who cries out in the night.
SO MUCH TIME
December’s foolishness, embers fall, tempters
Fly up into the dreamt palace. Things move so
Slowly in the soul. It must be that we’ve
Already been grieving for a hundred years.
Old men and women know how much time
Can go by while praying. Let’s not try
To cheer each other up. It’s all right.
We can stay in grieving another hundred years.
THE GRACKLES
Grackles stroll about on the black floor of sorrow.
Rabbis robed in saffron
feed them
Minnow bread. . . . They come to meet you.
Moses and his black wife walk like birds
And dance. Among the stalks of timothy grass
The saddled horses drink from sorrow tanks.
But the grackles’ toes are springy—they walk
Over the footprints the dreamer made last night.
FOR THE OLD GNOSTICS
The Fathers put their trust in the end of the world
And they were wrong. The Gnostics were right and not
Right. Dragons copulate with their knobby tails.
Some somnolent wealth rises unconcerned,
Yes, over there! Ponderous stubborn
Sorrow weighs down the flying Gospels.
Scholars cobble together new versions.
The untempered soul grumbles in empty light.
THE PHEASANT CHICKS
“As soon as the master is untied, the bird soars.”
That is what Tao Yuan Ming said one day.
“In the sad heat of noon the pheasant chicks
Spread their new wings in the moon dust.”
So many body cells recognize their loneliness.