Collected Poems
Page 40
Three-Day Fall Rain, 359
Three Kinds of Pleasures, 3
Three Presidents, 44
Threshers, The, 498
Tightening the Cinch, 427
Time Runs Backward after Death, 305
Today, autumn, 59
Today, lonely for my father, I saw, 222
Today I was alone a few hours, and slowly, 250
“To live” means to pick up particles of death, 177
To Live or Not, 177
Tongues Whirling, 115
Tonight I rode again in the moonlight!, 111
Tonight I rode through the cornfield in the moonlight!, 26
Tonight the first fall rain washes away my sly distance, 113
Trap-Door, The, 381
Tree Knocked Down by Lightning, The, 192
Trespassing on the Pierce Ranch, 138
Turkish Pears, 486
Turning Away from Lies, 56
Turtle, A, 128
Turtle, The (How shiny the turtle is, coming out), 72
Turtle, The (Rain lifts the lake level, washing the reeds), 246
Turtle Climbing from a Rock, 107
Two Days on the Farm, 166
Two Middle-Aged Lovers, 241
Two People at Dawn, 238
Two Prose Poems on Locked-In Animals, 132
Two Rivers, The, 243
Two Ways to Write Poems, 315
Uncrtainty, 497
Unrest, 11
Visiting Emily Dickinson’s Grave with Robert Francis, 209
Visiting My Father, 276
Visiting Sand Island, 364
Visiting the Eighty-Five-Year-Old Poet, 318
Visiting the Teacher, 424
Visiting Thomas Hart Benton and His Wife in Kansas City, 147
Wagon and the Cliff, The, 385
Waiting for the Stars, 268
Waking from Sleep, 4
Waking in the Middle of the Night, 445
Waking on the Farm, 321
Walk, A, 181
Walking. Afternoon. The war still going on, I stoop down to, 141
Walking and Sitting, 180
Walking Backward, 382
Walking in the Ditch Grass, 114
Walking in the Hardangervidda, 149
Walking north toward the point, I come on a dead seal. From a, 143
Walking on the Sussex Coast, 128
Walking Out in the Morning, 475
Walking Swiftly, 157
Walking to the Next Farm, 161
Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning, 186
Wallace Stevens and Florence, 271
Wallace Stevens in the Fourth Grade, 346
Walnut Tree Orchards, The, 110
Waltz, The, 347
Wanting More Applause at a Conference, 329
Wanting Sumptuous Heavens, 480
Wanting to Experience All Things, 65
Wanting to Steal Time, 383
War and Silence, 49
Watching Andrei Voznesensky Read in Vancouver, 130
Watching Television, 37
Water Drawn Up into The Head, 99
Waterfall Coming over a Cliff, 132
Watering the Horse, 23
Water is practical, 203
Water Tank, The, 482
Waves rush up, pause, and drag pebbles back around stones . . . , 142
Way the Parrot Learns, The, 386
We are approaching sleep: the chestnut blossoms in the mind, 12
We are in Reelfoot Lake, Green Island Cutoff. It is a wide ditch, 134
We are poor students who stay after school to study joy, 459
We are up. The wheel below my window hangs useless, like a, 146
We drive between lakes just turning green, 53
Week in Florence, A, 445
Week of Poems at Bennington, A, 340
Week on the Oregon Coast, A, 449
We have a longing for the mud on riverbanks, 378
We have gambled, we’ve staked our house on a throw, 447
We have to think now what it would be like, 348
We hear phrases: “He made me do it,” 332
We know the road the gods take, but we do not know, 274
We know the suffering is about to begin again, 500
Welcoming a Child in the Limantour Dunes, 138
Well, let’s say this morning is all of life there is—, 330
Well, water goes down the Montana gullies, 272
Well I do it, and it’s done, 343
Well there it is. There’s nothing to do, 340
We Love This Body, 167
We moved the poetry reading to the Exercise Room, 495
We Only Say That, 342
We saw new ice in the ruts on the way to school, 381
We slept that night in Delaware, Ohio, 16
We spent all day fishing and talking, 29
We started up. All the way he held my hand. Sometimes he falls, 139
We think of Charlemagne, 66
We walk together in willows, among willows, 244
We were sitting there, badly blessed, and brooding, 365
What Bill Stafford Was Like, 344
What can I say? You have this funny, 345
What cave are you in, hiding, rained on?, 18
What Did We See Today?, 499
What does it mean to live, 301
What Frightened Us, 242
What I did I did, 237
What if these long races go on repeating themselves, 42
What is it like to “get killed”? Getting killed, 316
What Is Sorrow For?, 489
What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse, 489
What is so strange about a tree alone in an open field?, 5
What is this wonderful thing? Brown and everywhere! It has, 130
What Kept Horace Alive, 377
What kind of people, 248
What Moves and Doesn’t Move, 260
What shall the world do with its children?, 39
What the Animals Paid, 324
What the Buttocks Think, 343
What the Old Poets Failed to Say, 505
What to Do with The Garden, 436
What we have loved is with us ever, 253
What We Provide, 252
What? You want to live your life over again?, 313
When a man like me steps out at dawn, it seems to him that he, 206
Whenever Jesus appears at the murky well, I, 394
When have we had enough?, 302
When I Am with You, 420
When I am with you, two notes of the sarod, 420
When I come near the red peony flower, 244
When I cry, I want everyone else to cry, 398
When I hear that we all belong to nonexistence, 457
When I look at childhood, I see the yellow rose bush, 323
When I wake, I hear sheep eating apple peels just outside the, 157
When I was President, I crushed snails with my bare teeth, 44
When I write poems, I need to be near grass that no one else, 152
When My Dead Father Called, 326
When summer was nearly over, 349
When the Cat Stole the Milk, 340
When the Dumb Speak, 67
When the two rivers, 253
When the waterholes go, and the fish flop about, 423
When the Wheel Does Not Move, 165
When Threshing Time Ends, 322
When we are in love, we love the grass, 20
When We Became Lovers, 376
When we start westward, 302
When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake, 274
When William Stafford Died, 272
When your privacy is beginning over, 108
When you’ve slept all night in a warm bed, sometimes, 483
Where We Must Look for Help, 14
Who is out there at six a.m.? The man, 478
Whole Moisty Night, The, 237
Why does the prophet climb on the same ship so
many times?, 423
Why do I suddenly feel free of panic?, 274
Why God allowed Montserrat to fall, 394
Why Is It the Spark’s Fault?, 404
Why We Don’t Die, 310
Widowed Friend, The, 341
Wildebeest, The, 372
“Will you rescue her?” We have dreams like that, 355
Wind blows, and lake water breaks over the bare lake-rocks no, 150
Winemaker and the Captain, The, 206
Wings Folding Up, 168
Winter Afternoon by the Lake, 360
Winter Poem, 239
With Pale Women in Maryland, 15
With small steps he climbed very high mountains, 344
Women We Never See Again, 183
Words Barely Heard, 253
Words Rising, 218
Words the Dreamer Spoke to My Father in Maine, 364
Wounding Others, 343
Writing Again, 173
Written at Mule Hollow, Utah, 216
Written in Dejection near Rome, 42
Yearly Failure, The, 174
Yellow Dot, The, 335
Yesterday I saw a face, 258
You’d have been surprised at lower Maryland, 476
You open your mouth, I put my tongue in, 115
Your chest, hospital gown, 276
You’re alone. Then there’s a knock, 477
You United States, frightened by dreams of Guatemala, 77
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Bly is the author of numerous poetry volumes, as well as books of nonfiction and translation. His honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal and the National Book Award. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.