Showing posts with label Robert Bly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Bly. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

the world cleanses itself this way








There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken 
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.




~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems


Thursday, May 4, 2023

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.




~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey




Friday, December 16, 2022

the man who didn't know






.
There was a man who didn't know what was his.
He thought as a boy that some demon forced him
To wear "his" clothes and live in "his" room
And sit on "his" chair and be the child of "his" parents.

Each time he sat down to dinner, it happened again.
His own birthday party belonged to someone else.
And - was it sweet potatoes that he liked? -
He should resist them.  Whose plate is this?

This man will be like a lean-to attached
To a house.  It doesn't have a foundation.
This man is helpful and hostile in each moment.
This man leans toward you and leans away.

He's charming, this man who doesn't know what is his.


.
~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems
photo by Lisa Kristine





Sunday, August 14, 2022

the sympathies of the long married

 
 
 
 
 
 



Oh well, let's go on eating the grains of eternity.
What do we care about improvements in travel?
Angels sometimes cross the river on old turtles.

Shall we worry about who gets left behind?
That one bird flying through the clouds is enough.
Your sweet face at the door of the house is enough.

The two farm horses stubbornly pull the wagon.
The mad crows carry away the tablecloth.
Most of the time, we live through the night.

Let's not drive the wild angels from our door.
Maybe the mad fields of grain will move.
Maybe the troubled rocks will learn to walk.

It's all right if we're troubled by the night.
It's all right if we can't recall our own name.
It's all right if this rough music keeps on playing.

I've given up worrying about men living alone.
I do worry about the couple who live next door.
Some words heard through the screen door are enough.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ~  Robert Bly
from Talking into the ear of a Donkey
with thanks to whiskey river
 
 
 

Thursday, July 28, 2022

poem in three parts

 
 
 
 

 
 
 1.
 
Oh, on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh,
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.
 
 
2.
 
Rising from a bed, where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals,
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night,
Bathed in dark water, like any blade of grass.
 
3.
 
The strong leaves of the box-elder tree,
Plunging in the wind, call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe,
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant,
And live forever, like the dust.
 
 
 
 
~ Robert Bly
from  Silence in the Snowy Fields
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, March 27, 2022

wanting and contentment





 

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone 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.
 
 
 

~ Robert Bly
from The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2007
 art by Henri Matisse
 

Monday, December 20, 2021

each time


.

.
 
The soul said, "Give me something to look at."
So I gave her a farm.  She said,
"It's too large."  So I gave her a field.
The two of us sat down.
.
Sometimes I would fall in love with a lake
Or a pine cone.  But I liked her
Most.  She knew it.
"Keep writing," she said.
.
So I did.  Each time the new snow fell,
We would be married again.
The holy dead sat down by our bed.
This went on for years.
.
"This field is getting too small," she said.
"Don't you know anyone else
To fall in love with?"
What would you have said to Her?
 
 
 
 
 
~ Robert Bly
.

.

where no one has a home

.







.
The wind blows where it likes: that is what 
Everyone is like who is born from the wind.
Oh now it's getting serious.  We want to be those
Born from the wind that blows along the plains
And over the sea where no one has a home.
And that Upsetting Rabbi, didn't he say:
"Take nothing with you, no blanket, no bread.
When evening comes, sleep wherever you are.
And if the owners say no, shake out the dust
From your sandals; leave the dust on their doorstep."
Don't hope for what will never come.  Give up hope,
Dear friends, the joists of life are laid on the winds.

.
 
 
~ Robert Bly
excerpt from A Poem for Giambattista Vico 


.

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

gratitude to old teachers











When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers? 

Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.





~ Robert Bly 
from Eating the Honey of Words




what caused us each to live hidden?




What caused us each to live hidden?
A wound, the wind, a word, a parent.
Sometimes we wait in a helpless way,
awkwardly, not whole and not healed.

When we hid the wound, we fell back
from a human to a shelled life.



~ Robert Bly
from Stealing Sugar from the Castle




.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

longing for the perfect






After we had loved each other intently, 
we heard notes tumble together, 
in late winter, and we heard ice 
falling from the ends of twigs. 

The notes abandon so much as they move. 
They are the food not eaten, the comfort 
not taken, the lies not spoken. 
The music is my attention to you. 

And when the music came again, 
late in the day, I saw tears in your eyes. 
I saw you turn your face away 
So that others would not see. 

When men and women come together, 
how much they have to abandon. Wrens 
make their nests of fancy threads 
and string ends, animals 

abandon all their money each year. 
What is it that men and women leave? 
Harder than wren's doing, they have 
to abandon their longing for the perfect. 

The inner nest not made by instinct 
will never be quite round, 
and each has to enter the nest 
made by the other imperfect bird.



~ Robert Bly
from Eating the Honey of Words
art by Rassouli


Wednesday, February 10, 2021

the resemblance between your life and a dog






I never intended to have this life, believe me --
It just happened.  You know how dogs turn up
At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.


It's good if you can accept your life - you'll notice
Your face has become deranged trying to adjust
To it.  Your face thought your life would look


Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.
That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.
Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.


Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,
Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.
You see them later in hedges.  Teachers praise you,


But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.
Your life is a dog.  He's been hungry for miles,
Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.








~ Robert Bly
from Eating the Honey of Words




Friday, December 18, 2020

we came to lose our leaves






As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow 
and to distinguish it from depression. 

It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, 
and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.

One day while studying a [William Butler] Yeats poem 
I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. 
I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, 
music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, 
and events of one's own life.

There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty 
then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.

We can exchange sparks of light with another's eyes 
when we meet our lover on the dance floor at someone else's wedding. 
Our brains then go about warmed and fiery, and with one note 
they can explode into cello concertos and can imagine the giant blinking 
at the top of the bean stalk... His barbarous fingers scratching his head.

There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. 
Driving around, I will waste more time.




~ Robert Bly




Sunday, November 29, 2020

closed for the night










~ St. John of the Cross
read by Robert Bly




Friday, July 3, 2020

the skinny birds of non-existence









~ Robert Bly



Tuesday, June 23, 2020

When I come near the red peony flower





When I come near the red peony flower
I tremble as water does near thunder,
As the well does when the plates of earth move,
Or the tree when fifty birds leave at once.

The peony says that we have been given a gift,
And it is not the gift of this world.
Behind the leaves of the peony
There is a world still darker, that feeds many.



~ Robert Bly

Sunday, May 17, 2020

a ramage for a 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.



~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey



Saturday, May 16, 2020

watering the horse







How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane!



~ Robert Bly


Tuesday, May 5, 2020

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.




~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey



Thursday, April 23, 2020

a question the bundle had


.



When summer was nearly over,
The bundles would stand in the stubble
Whispering.  One said: "For a while,
It looked like I might get away."

"I could have done it -
No one would have noticed.
But it was hard to know
If I should go singly, or with others."

Each of us resembles that
Bundle.  For years we waited
For the right moment to escape.
Perhaps it was that moment in July

When the thunder came.  But the next
Day it was too late.  And we
Ended up in the thresher.
Were we right to wait?



~ Robert Bly
an early Vincent Van Gogh