by Robert Bly
Laughter goes back to the roots of trees.
When I put myself last, an old sorrow comes.
An old sadness returns in the sorrowing dust.
ORION AND THE FARMSTEAD
Orion, that old hunter, floats among the stars
Firmly . . . the farms beneath his feet. How long
It takes for me to agree to walk like him.
Eighty years old, and still placing my feet
So hopefully each night on the ground.
It takes a long time to agree to sorrow.
But that great walker follows his dogs,
Hunting all night among the disappearing stars.
SILENT IN THE MOONLIGHT
Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.
Alone, and not alone. A man and a woman lie
On open ground, under an antelope robe.
They sleep under animal skin, looking up
At the old, clear stars. How many years?
The robe thrown over them, rough
Where they sleep. Outside, the moon, the plains
Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.
A RAMAGE FOR THE MOUNTAIN
Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.
So the binding things are lost, then found again,
The tines dug out of the snow, the singing so low
The other cannot hear it. Some sounds do fit
Thick cords and strong fingers. Slowly the mountain
Enters the man who walks on its slopes alone.
He walks, he sits down, he finds a stone;
No one has seen it, he sits down and is alone.
WHAT IS SORROW FOR?
What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse
Where we store wheat, barley, corn and tears.
We step to the door on a round stone,
And the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow.
And I say to myself: Will you have
Sorrow at last? Go on, be cheerful in autumn,
Be stoic, yes, be tranquil, calm;
Or in the valley of sorrows spread your wings.
LOVERS IN THE RIVER
Peony blossoms open in starlight. The lovers
Cross the river carefully, secretly, secretly.
All night horses stamp on the sandy island.
Husbands feel uneasy tonight; their wives,
We know, have gathered with Krishna in the river,
Their bodies sweetened by glad bones.
While David sings, stars fall into the sea; Uriah
Dies . . . It is the madness of the dark-faced God.
THE CAMELS
So many camels kneel to take their burdens on.
What choice do we have but to go down? How
Can I be close to you if I’m not sad? The clam tumbles
In the surf, and amber holds the secret desires
The bee felt before his room grew silent.
The salmon has to weave through so many waters
Before he can return to his old home.
So many stammerers labor to speak one word.
V
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
The snow is falling, and the world is calm.
The flakes are light, but they cool the world
As they fall, and add to the calm of the house.
It’s Sunday afternoon. I am reading
Longinus while the Super Bowl is on.
The snow is falling, and the world is calm.
THE TEAPOT
That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot.
The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound.
But all at once, I knew you loved me.
An unheard-of thing, love audible in water falling.
READY TO SLEEP
Don’t be afraid.
The great lettuce of the world
Is all around us.
THE HOUSEFLY
Blessings now on all
Who bend their heads!
Didn’t Joseph bend
His head low to kiss
The baker’s feet?
The muskrat gives up
His father’s house.
The housefly bends his
Head down and gives
Up his elegant
Heaven to live with us.
MY FATHER AT FORTY
I loved him so much. I’ve said
That before, so don’t be surprised.
It was a first love. Go ahead, open
Your hand. Do scissors beat
Paper? Does rock beat scissors?
It’s just love and can’t be
Explained. Probably it
Happened early. You’re looking
At it. The way I found
Of opening a poem I took
From the way he walked into a field.
MY MOTHER
My mother was afraid—oh not
Of the things you imagine—just
Tuberculosis, death,
And my father. She did all right.
There was some sweetness
Bubbling up—a lot of affection
And early happiness. She didn’t take
Being a mother too seriously.
Her own mother died of the flu
In the First War. So
Everything was shaky.
People kept leaving.
She had an instinct to
Escape herself. She took a job
In town and bought a piano
With her own money.
She lived a long time
In the old people’s home.
The nurses liked her,
But she hardly said a word.
IT’S MORNING AGAIN
It’s morning again. Last night I spent hours
In a dream, and I had to keep silent,
As if we were visiting crickets or nuns.
It’s a good morning. The cat sleeps all day
Under the lilac bush, and scholars go on
Discovering new maps of Constantinople.
My daughter has found that her girlish things
Were all moonshine. Now she has a baby.
She is the sun and the baby is asleep.
For Bridget
SOMETHING TO DO FOR AUNT CLARA
There’s something we hold to in the morning. Maybe
It’s just the light, or the way the clock by the bed
Changes slowly, or how wall paintings gradually
Become clear, or the good weight of the eiderdown.
Maybe it’s all the books here in this room.
And the sound of dishes rattling, and the teenagers
Waking up, and a child muttering to herself. Now we have time
For the last few sips of coffee before we go to the funeral.
THE MAN AT THE DOOR
Last night in my dream I took some steps
Underground. It seemed to be a holy place—
Perhaps monks a thousand years ago
Thought there. I had almost forgotten them.
How could we forget? Well, it’s easy.
A guard at the door—you know the kind,
Those who keep people out—stopped me.
I began singing, “Hum-du-lah,
“Hum-du-lah.” I couldn’t remember
What those words meant.
But the man at the door grew
Light-headed, and let me slip in.
THE HERMIT
Early in the morning the hermit wakes, hearing
The roots of the fir tree stir beneath his floor.
Someone is there. That strength buried
In earth carries up the summer world. When
A man loves a woman, he nourishes her.
Dancers strew the lawn with the light of their feet.
When a woman loves the earth, she nourishes it.
Earth nourishes what no one can see.
A POETRY READING AT BENEDICTINE COLLEGE IN ATCHISON, KANSAS
TO REMEMBER WILLIAM STAFFOR
D
We moved the poetry reading to the Exercise Room
For coziness. There we shifted a large bike to the side.
A certain exhilaration entered the room
When the words all agreed to point in one direction.
You said that Lewis and Clark’s gang one night
Slept over there by the river, and Amelia Earhart
Lived till she was twelve in that gray house.
Maybe we could all do something brave if we tried.
We, even the heaviest, started to float when we
Remembered the sound of a moth on a screen
Trying to get out. Our lives might change today!
Listening with Sister Faith in the Exercise Room.
VI
UNCERTAINTY
There are so many worlds under the fingernails—
I don’t know what to say—probably
We have been keeping slaves alive at night.
I worry about my friends on their lonely road—
They didn’t get much good from knowing us—
We kept sending ourselves on the wrong path.
Each day your wife swears she won’t leave you,
And each night she is gone; we have to call
Up all our old enemies to find her again.
Most nights the moon returns to its place in the sky.
But there are no messages for twelve hours.
God sends a note saying that he will be late.
Occasionally a victim gets out of prison,
And takes a room across the street. As soon as he waves
To us, policemen appear and take him away.
Each of these stanzas says something, but what?
Each line says something we don’t want to hear.
But each is a stone that takes us over the river.
THE THRESHERS
There’s no use whining over lost worlds.
The old chicken never picks up the last grains,
And the threshers usually go home when night comes.
Have we thanked the sun for shining so well?
Have we blessed the clouds for their thoughtfulness?
Have we thanked the rain that falls on the fields?
It would be good to go back a hundred years,
And recite some of Wordsworth’s sonnets to him.
But it’s probably best to let him go on walking.
Let’s just agree we’re on our own now,
And that we have to wash our own pajamas,
And figure out some way to get home.
We can still tell stories about the Dillinger boys,
And we can still buy balloons for our children,
But it will be hard to make up The Book of Hours.
We know that most lost fathers never return,
And the clocks run only one way,
And the threshers always go home when night comes.
THE LONGING
I don’t know why air drops gather on the inside
Of water glasses, and why the shaggy dog
Always seems to be waiting for heaven.
We have had more blessings than our parents had.
Even on Mondays, we can knock on doors
Asking strangers to give us a ticket to heaven.
The porcupine climbs straight up the tree
With his heavy tail hanging down,
But he doesn’t give two beans for heaven.
The old man lying in bed writing poems
Feels his brain light up, and he knows
That in some odd way he is approaching heaven.
Men sometimes turn around to see a woman better.
The eyes of beautiful women often glow
When the handsome priest talks of heaven.
I write these poems so happily each day.
I guess it means that I’ve had a longing
All morning to write the word “heaven.”
WHAT DID WE SEE TODAY?
Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.
On other days, we are like a light that sweeps
Out over the husky soybean fields all night.
What did we see today? Horses at the end
Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,
Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.
Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno
Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent
And lose ourselves in the curved energy.
We know how many men live alone in their twenties,
And how many women are married to the wrong person,
And how many fathers and sons are strangers to each other.
It’s all right if we keep forgetting the way home.
It’s all right if we don’t remember when we were born.
It’s all right if we write the same poem over and over.
Robert, I don’t know why you talk so confidently
About yourself in this way. There are a lot of shady
Characters in this town, and you are one of them.
THE LONG-LEGGÉD BIRDS
We know the suffering is about to begin again.
It’s in the long-leggéd birds flying over the house,
And in the low strings played by women on Good Friday.
Boys love to play flutes made of grassblades.
And bent trumpets keep on calling to the moon.
But the violin aims for failure and redemption.
The tortoise has a lot of trouble dragging its shell.
You and I have tried in a thousand ingenious ways
To keep up with the suffering expected of us.
There’s no use in our trying to be normal.
A dozen times a day we rewrite the details
That would give strangers a glimpse of us.
The musicians were clearly magicians once.
Their sorrow goes on long after the strings are still,
And a hundred sufferings dissolve into a single chord.
None of us old ones are able to find enough suffering.
Each day we remember the long-leggéd birds flying
Over the house and our longing for redemption.
For Noah
HEARING MUSIC AT DAWN
It is sweet to hear music when the night
Is just retreating from the smoky branches
And the sun’s enemies are throwing down their gloves.
Music is always reminding us whom we love.
One or two notes dissolve the auditor’s mind
So we are swimming once more in the old river.
We are all failed farmers learning to play whist.
We have a lot of hands to play before midnight.
Someone else will have to worry about the time.
I’m always glad when I hear that an old hen
Has been seen crossing the road at dusk.
It means our old teacher is still all right.
We keep remembering Barbarossa’s life.
A little whiskey fits in well with our lives.
The time of the Depression is not really over.
Poems like this amount to some form of music.
We dance for two hours. When we look up,
We see that all the musicians have disappeared.
THE HAWK IN HIS NEST
It’s all right if this suffering goes on for years.
It’s all right if the hawk never finds his own nest.
It’s all right if we never receive the love we want.
It’s all right if we listen to the sitar for hours.
It doesn’t matter how softly the musician plays.
Sooner or later the melody will say it all.
It doesn’t matter if we regret our crimes or not.
The mice will carry our defeats into Asia,
And the Tuva throat-singers will tell the whole story.
It’s all right if we can’t remain cheerful all day.
The task we
have accepted is to go down
To renew our friendship with the ruined things.
It’s all right if people think we are idiots.
It’s all right if we lie face down on the earth.
It’s all right if we open the coffin and climb in.
It’s not our fault that things have gone wrong.
Let’s agree that it was Saturn and the other old men
Who have arranged this series of defeats for us.
MY MOURNFUL ROOM
I don’t know why my mournful room is like heaven,
Nor why elephants walk with such a lazy stride,
Nor why the wide-wingéd birds give us so much pleasure.
I don’t know why I worry about Hans Brinker,
Nor why I remember so well my old teachers,