by Robert Bly
Oh yes, I love you, book of my confessions, 72
Old Boards, 28
Old Fishing Lines, The, 475
Old literary privacies are in danger, 361
Old Man with Missing Fingers, The, 160
Old St. Peter by Rembrandt, The, 403
Old Woman Frying Perch, The, 312
On a Moonlit Road in the North Woods, 109
On a Saturday afternoon in the football season, 25
Once I loved you only a few minutes a day, 256
Once more in Brooklyn Heights, 22
Once more the murky world is becoming confused. Oh, 372
One day a mouse called to me from his curly nest, 367
One man I know keeps saying that we don’t need, 347
One Source of Bad Information, 354
On the Ferry across Chesapeake Bay, 17
On the orchard of the sea, far out are whitecaps, 17
On the Oregon Coast, 272
On this windy December night two children lost their way, 112
Opening an Oyster, 66
Opening the Door of a Barn I Thought Was Empty on New Year’s Eve, 154
Orchard Keeper, The, 167
Orion, that old hunter, floats among the stars, 488
Orion And the Farmstead, 488
Our veins are open to shadow, and our fingertips, 401
“Out of The Rolling Ocean, The Crowd . . . ,” 236
Out Picking Up Corn, 194
Oval, 173
Owlets at Nightfall, The, 159
Parcel, The, 353
Passing a Spanish Orchard by Train, 182
Paying Attention to the Melody, 465
Pelicans at White Horse Key, The, 431
Peony blossoms open in starlight. The lovers, 490
People are moving big milk cans around in, 383
People Like Us, 361
Perhaps the turtle loves his sturdy back too much, 408
Pheasant Chicks, The, 488
Pilgrim Fish Heads, 80
Pistachio Nut, The, 439
Pitzeem and the Mare, 390
Playful Deeds of the Wind, The, 328
Please tell me why the lamb is in love with the wolf, 372
Poem, The, 116
Poem about Tennessee, A, 134
Poem against the British, 13
Poem against the Rich, 13
Poem for Andrew Marvell, A, 418
Poem for Giambattista Vico Written by the Pacific, A, 365
Poem in Three Parts, 9
Poem Is Some Remembering, A, 344
Poem on Sleep, 252
Poetry is an occupation fit for slaughterers, 396
Poetry Reading at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, A, 495
Poetry Reading in Maryland, A, 476
Porcupine in the Wind, The, 146
Prayer Service in an English Church, 188
Prince Philip becomes irritable, the royal sports car, 76
Prodigal Son, The, 200
Prophets, 178
Pulling a Rowboat Up among Lake Reeds, 184
Question in the Los Gatos Hills, 300
Question the Bundle Had, A, 349
Raft of Green Logs, The, 396
Rain falls on mountain grass; we remain close all day, 251
Rain falls on the shore bushes and the pawky sea, 356
Rains, 472
Ram, The, 249
Rameau’s Music, 446
Ravens Hiding in a Shoe, 463
Reading an Anglo-Saxon love poem in its extravagance, 261
Reading in a Boat, 321
Reading in Fall Rain, 176
Reading Silence in the Snowy Fields, 363
Ready to Sleep, 491
Rembrandt’s Brown Ink, 431
Rembrandt’s Etchings, 402
Rembrandt’s Portrait of Titus with a Red Hat, 387
Remembering in Oslo the Old Picture of the Magna Carta, 14
Rendezvous at an Abandoned Farm, 149
Resemblance between Your Life and a Dog, The, 320
Rethinking Wallace Stevens, 345
Returning Poem, 249
Return to Solitude, 4
Riderless Horses, 64
Rock Islet on the Pacific, A, 135
Romans Angry about the Inner World, 39
Roof Nail, The, 472
Roots, The, 242
Russian, The, 316
Sacrifice in the Orchard, A, 220
Samson, grinding bread for widows and orphans, 305
Sand Heaps, 450
Scandal, The, 351
Seawater Pouring Back over Stones, 142
Secrets, 237
Seeing Creeley for the First Time, 124
Seeing the Eclipse in Maine, 349
Seeing You Carry Plants In, 243
Sense of Decline, The, 201
Sense of Getting Older, The, 474
September. Clouds. The first day for wearing jackets, 8
September Night with an Old Horse, 26
Seven Stars of the Great Bear, The, 192
Shabistari and The Secret Garden, 453
Shack Poem, 74
Shadow Goes Away, The, 89
Shame, 257
She comes and lays him carefully in my hand—a caterpillar! A, 129
Sheds left out in the darkness, 177
She knew a lot about life on a farm: wagon, 324
Shocks We Put Our Pitchforks Into, The, 310
Shoehorn, The, 437
Silence, 29
Silent in the Moonlight, 489
Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end, 489
Singing the Same Throaty Note, 438
Sister de Chantal hands, 214
Sitting in Fall Grass, 174
Sitting on Some Rocks in Shaw Cove, 122
Six Winter Privacy Poems, 71
Sleeper, The, 158
Sleeping Faces, 113
Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway, 47
Slim Fir Seeds, The, 485
Smoke rises from mountain depths, a girl walks by the water, 165
Smoke-Stained Fingers, 504
Smothered by the World, 38
Snowbanks North of the House, 199
Snowed In Again, 168
Snowfall in the Afternoon, 30
Snow has been falling for three days. The horses stay in the, 168
Snow has covered the next line of tracks, 58
Snow has fallen on snow for two days behind the Keilen farmhouse, 167
So Be It. Amen., 412
Solitude Late at Night in the Woods, 22
So many blessings have been given to us, 464
So many camels kneel to take their burdens on, 490
So many things happen, 224
Some aggravations include the whole world, 359
Somebody showed off and tried to tell the truth, 364
Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves, 499
Some gamblers abandon carefully built houses, 400
Some Images for Death, 112
Some intensity of the body came to me at five in the morning, 186
Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn, 412
Some Men Find It Hard to Finish Sentences, 318
Some November Privacy Poems, 109
Someone comes near, the jaw, 43
Someone has left a light on at the boathouse, 188
Some people say that every poem should have, 345
Something to Do for Aunt Clara, 494
Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin, 3
Sometimes a man can’t say, 318
Sometimes a poem has her own husband, 486
Sometimes I get in my car on a late October day, 475
Sometimes there’s the wind. Sometimes the wind, 328
So much happens when the dock comes in, 483
So Much Time, 487
Sounds are heard too high for ears, 37
St. George, The Dragon, and the Virgin, 297
St. George fights the dra
gon, 297
Standing under a Cherry Tree at Night, 131
Starting a Poem, 477
Stealing Sugar from the Castle, 459
Storm, The, 334
Storyteller’s Way, The, 408
Such Different Wants, 246
Suddenly Turning Away, 43
Summer, 1960, Minnesota, 15
Sunday Afternoon, 491
Sunset at a Lake, 7
Suppertime. I leave my cabin and start toward the house. Something,190
Suppose there were a bear and a man. The bear, 325
Suppose you see a face in a Toyota, 350
Surprised by Evening, 6
Sympathies of the Long-Married, The, 468
“Taking the Hands,” 20
Taking the hands of someone you love, 20
Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, 480
Tammuz, bright with feathers, goes to the Underworld, 395
Tao Te Ching Running, 77
Tasting Heaven, 345
Teapot, The, 491
Teeth Mother Naked at Last, The, 81
Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days, 427
Tell Tristan the tip of his tongue is beautiful, 418
Testifying to the Night, 408
That afternoon I had been fishing alone, 191
That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot, 491
That Problem in the Family, 484
That’s odd—I am trying to sit still, 180
The Arctic moose drinks at the tundra’s edge, 251
The bear in his heavy fur rises from the bed, 253
The bird dips to take some water in its bill, 261
The birds fly away into the air that never ends, 111
The blue sky suddenly gone—fog. We cut the engine and drift, 140
The board floats on the river, 246
The body is like a November birch facing the full moon, 22
The bombers spread out, temperature steady, 49
The Boston College team has gold helmets, under which the, 125
The bridegroom wanted to reach the Norwegian Church, 454
The Buddhist ordered his boy to bring him, New Year’s, 213
The cabin of the early snail swerves and falls, 241
The cardinal’s cry could be heard at Gettysburg, 403
The cherry branches sway . . . they are arms that prophesy, 131
The child left alone on the butte calls out to his grandmother in the pine, 202
The cross-hatching brings the night into the day, 402
The crow nests high in the fir, 252
The cry of those being eaten by America, 41
The cucumbers are thirsty, their big leaves turn away from the, 168
The day is awake. The bark calls to the rain still in the cloud, 187
The day the minister ran off with the choir director, 351
The dock is done, pulled out on the lake. How I love, 193
The doctor arrives to inject the movie star against delirium tremens, 75
The donkey has led us through so many cultures!, 445
The dove returns; it found no resting place, 14
The drum says that the night we die will be a long night, 451
The Dutch have been growing tulips since 1500, 380
The dying bull is bleeding on the mountain!, 64
The eighty-five-year-old man stands up, 318
The elephants rock back and forth, their vast gray heads with, 132
The fall has come, clear as the eyes of chickens, 29
The Farallones seals clubbed, 201
The Fathers put their trust in the end of the world, 488
The fields are black once more, 176
“The fish are in the fishman’s window,” the grain, 393
“The Five Ways of Knowing the World” worries me, 399
The Gaiety of Form, 273
The girl in a housedress, pushing open the window, 14
The goose cries, and there is no way to save her, 411
The grass is half-covered with snow, 30
The Hampshire ewes standing in their wooden pens, 324
The harsh bark on the calendar oaks and the bowl, 436
The hawk sweeps down from his aerie, 262
The horse lay on his knees sleeping, 175
The horses gallop east, over the steppes, each with its rider, 160
The ink we write with seeps in through our fingers, 391
The man and the woman linger under a tree, 241
The man who sits up late at night cutting, 292
The man with the Roman nose sits high, 220
The mountain bushes move toughly in the wind. There has been, 149
The mountain receives the last sunshine of fall, 114
The mourning dove insists there is only one morning, 421
The mourning dove’s call woke me, 479
The music that Nirmala is playing today goes, 467
The nest is white as the foam thrown up when the sea hits rocks!, 121
The nimble ovenbird, the dignity of pears, 485
“Then the bright being disguised as a seal dove into the deep billows,” 252
The oaks reluctantly let their leaves fall, 407
The ocean swirls up over the searock. It falls back, returns, and, 135
The old Germans step inside Trinity Church, 422
The old man sits in his chair and looks down, 472
The orange stripes on his head shoot forward into the future, 128
The Pharaoh’s wives touch the mud with their toes, 374
The pin fails, and the wagon goes over the cliff, 385
The poor and the dazed and the idiots, 62
The Prodigal Son is kneeling in the husks, 200
The quivering wings of the winter ant, 239
The ram walks over the minty grass, 249
There are eyes in the dry wisps of grass, 174
There are longings to kill that cannot be seen, 51
There are more like us. All over the world, 361
There are people who don’t want Kierkegaard to be, 412
There Are So Many Platos, 421
There are so many stories. In one, a bear, 319
There are so many things to love around, 342
There are so many worlds under the fingernails—, 497
There are women we love whom we never see again, 183
There has been light snow, 23
There is a bird that flies through the water, 114
There is a dense energy that pools in the abdomen and wants to, 165
There is another darkness, 42
There is a time. Things end, 322
There is something men and women living in houses, 463
There is so much forgotten rock in the world, 269
There is so much sweetness in children’s voices, 466
There is still time for the old days when the musician, 504
There is unknown dust that is near us, 6
There’s a boy in you about three, 354
There’s a graceful way of doing things. Birch branches, 367
There’s a joyful night in which we lose, 67
There’s no doubt winter is coming. I see, 474
There’s no end to the going forth on ships, 470
There’s no use whining over lost worlds, 498
There’s something dangerous, 355
There’s something we hold to in the morning. Maybe, 494
There was a boy who never got enough, 330
There was a man who didn’t know what was his, 333
The roses lift from the green strawberry-like leaves, their, 208
The rubbing of the sleeping bag on my ear made me dream a, 210
“The Russians had few doctors on the front line,” 316
The salty stars experience the ruin of the world, 503
The sea boils in over underwater rocks, then swiftly pulls back, 135
These pines, these fall oaks, these rocks, 27
; These suggestions by Asians are not taken seriously, 49
The shocks said that winter, 310
The singers will never stop protesting against the rain, 432
The snow is falling, and the world is calm, 491
The sorrow of an old horse standing in the rain, 431
The soul is in love with marshy ground and snails, 404
The soul said, “Give me something to look at,” 312
The spider sways in October winds; she hears the whisk, 485
The spring wind blows dissatisfactions, 114
The stone driveway is littered with chill leaves, damp in the, 147
The sun goes down in the dusty April night, 194
The sun is sinking. Each minute the air darker. The night thickens, 159
The sun is sinking. Here on the pine-hunted bank, the mosquitoes, 7
The sunlight on wheat-heads in August holds me firmly, 505
The sun orange and rose, 238
The teeth of the black and shaggy pony rips grass from its roots, 192
The third week moon reaches its light over my father’s farm, 191
The three-bottom plow is standing in the corner of a stubble, 175
The three-day, 359
The vet screams, and throws his crutch at a passerby, 293
The Viking ship sails into the full harbor, 237
The Virgin is thinking of a child—who will drive the rioters out, 121
The waves come—the large fourth wave, 272
The weather is moody and rainy, 472
The wind through the box-elder trees, 13
The woman chained to the shore stands bewildered as night comes, 89
They lie on the bed, hearing music, 246
They’ve gathered on the farm lawn, ten people, all ages, 323
Things to Think, 315
Thinking about Old Jobs, 330
Thinking of a child soon to be born, I hunch down among, 138
Thinking of “The Autumn Fields,” 107
Thinking of Tu Fu’s Poem, 179
Thinking of Wallace Stevens on the First Snowy Day in December, 6
Think in ways you’ve never thought before, 315
Third Body, The, 240
This body holds its protective wall around us, it watches us, 160
This body is made of bone and excited protozoa . . . and it is, 162
This body offers to carry us for nothing—as the ocean carries, 158
This burning in the eyes as we open doors, 59
This grandson of fishes holds inside him, 65
This new snow seems to speak of virgins, 6
Thomas and the Codfish’s Psalm, 273
Thoreau as a Lover, 486
Those Being Eaten by America, 41
Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet from the house . . . , 199
Those insects, golden, 177
Thoughts, 355
Thoughts in The Cabin, 274