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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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 

.

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



.

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

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

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

closed for the night

~ St. John of the Cross

read by Robert Bly

the skinny birds of non-existence

~ Robert Bly

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

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

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

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

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